


The Impossible Season

by coyotesuspect



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bring Back Black, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-13 23:48:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12995196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotesuspect/pseuds/coyotesuspect
Summary: Six months after falling through the Veil, Sirius comes back. As a seventeen-year-old.Remus takes him in.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mllevangogh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllevangogh/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, Molly. Smak. <3
> 
> Written for mllevangogh, for the prompt: "Bring Back Black but he's 17 and Remus is not (eyes emoji) you can make this however you want just give me that Good Shit (sex)"
> 
> Posted in two parts because this got way longer than expected and wasn't finished the night we were supposed to exchange gifts. T rating for chapter one, E rating for chapter two.

_Professor Lupin,_ begins the first letter, the one from Dumbledore. _Your presence is requested immediately at Hogwarts._

 _Remus_ , writes Minerva, in the second letter that arrived just as the first owl left.

_You're going to want to see this._

Remus lays both letters side by side on his table and studies them as he drinks his tea. The morning light that streams through his kitchen window is a weak and pale gold, but at least the sun is shining. It's been a dark November, even by the standards of that bleak month. Remus has half a mind to take the stack of editing he needs to finish to a Muggle cafe and sit in the cold sun for a couple hours. He's sick of Order business. He's sick of the world ending.

But he finishes his tea with a sigh and straightens his robe. He'll have to hem it again soon, he registers dimly. He adds it to his mental list of tedious tasks that he’s unlikely to complete and steps outside. 

He apparates. 

Scotland is colder and grayer than Wales, a hard wind blowing and the clouds fat with the possibility of snow. Remus holds his cloak tightly around himself as he makes the walk up from Hogsmeade to the castle. Hogsmeade is depressing. There are few people out in the streets, and all, like Remus, are bent against the wind, hurrying off to somewhere they’ll be warm. It’s too early for Christmas decorations to have gone up, but, reflects Remus, perhaps that would just lend an edge of hysteria to the whole, dismal scene. 

Or maybe he’s just projecting, he tells himself. His mouth twists, and he shunts the thought aside. 

A few students recognize him once he’s reached Hogwarts. 

“Professor Lupin!” shouts Seamus Finnegan. “Are you back? Are you replacing Snape? _Please_ say you’re replacing Snape.” 

Remus attempts to look engaged. He remembers liking Finnegan, but he's at a loss to do more than summon a vague smile.

“I’m afraid not,” he says. “I’m just here to see Professor Dumbledore.” 

Finnegan looks disappointed, and Remus manages to keep his smile up until he reaches the gargoyles that guard the stairs to Dumbledore’s office. 

“Fizzing whisbees,” he says, tired, and he takes the stairs up. 

As soon as he steps inside the office, he freezes.

Seated in front of Dumbledore’s desk is Sirius. He recognizes him immediately.

Remus gropes at the air and feels his knees start to buckle. Minerva grabs his arm and, with surprising strength, steadies him. 

Sirius turns in his seat and looks at him. Remus stares. It’s Sirius, but it’s not Sirius as he remembers him – not the Sirius he saw fall through the Veil. He’s much younger. He looks like he did at seventeen. Remus has seen him twice like this in Dumbledore’s office. The first in the middle of the sixth year, when Sirius had led Severus to the Shrieking Shack. It had been the three of them and James, and Remus had barely been able to look at Sirius the whole time. He had felt only a vast and spreading chill. 

The second time had been the end of their seventh year, when Dumbledore had told them about the Order of the Phoenix. Sirius then had glowed, and even Remus, for all his tendency to worry, hadn’t the faintest idea of what awful road lay ahead of them. He'd just been honored to be asked to join.

Both these memories strike Remus at once, and he’s locked into place, beyond words. Sirius keeps staring at him, eyebrows drawn together in a faint expression of consternation. Then, he rises and walks across the office. Remus almost wants to leap away – like a Muggle who’s seen a ghost. But he remains rooted to the spot. 

“Moony?” says the boy with Sirius’s face, in Sirius’s voice. 

And then he reaches up and touches Remus’s face, lightly, high on the cheek. Remus feels his heart leap in his chest – _Sirius! Sirius touching him!_ – an awful, wonderful, familiar feeling, something that twice now he’s never expected to feel again.

Remus closes his eyes and finally manages to find his voice. 

“Yes, Padfoot,” he says roughly. “It’s me.” 

Sirius drops his hand and laughs, forced and loud. 

“All right,” he says. “This is very funny. But I’m ready for the prank to be over.” He looks behind Remus, as if expecting to see someone else there. “Prongs? Wormtail? Wherever you are – joke’s over. I don’t know you got McGonagall in on it, but I am duly impressed.” 

Remus’s chest squeezes painfully. Again, he’s unable to speak. He wants, so much, for it to just be a joke. That James and Peter will pop out from behind Dumbledore’s desk, rolling with laughter. _“We really got you that time, Padfoot! Serves you right for that trick with the niffler!”_

But they won’t. Remus long ago accepted that miracles don’t happen; that the truth is always as bad as it says it is.

“Sirius,” says Minerva, with more gentleness than Remus has ever heard her speak. “I’m afraid this is no joke. It’s 1996.” 

“No,” says Sirius furiously. He glares at Minerva. “This is some – some extremely well done prank! You’re probably Prongs, honestly!” He waves his hand in front of McGonagall’s face, imperious and demanding. “Cut it out, Potter!” 

Remus steps between them and grabs Sirius’s hands. 

“It’s not a prank, Sirius,” he says. His voice breaks halfway through Sirius’s name, and he has to take a deep, steadying breath. Sirius’s expression is horrified, transfixed. “I wish it were. But I wouldn’t lie to you about this.” 

Sirius pulls his hands away quickly. He wheels around the room, staring at Remus, Minerva, and Dumbledore in turn. Each of them look back - wary, sympathetic. He collapses back into a chair. 

“Holy fucking shit,” he breathes out, and then his head jerks up quickly. He stares at Remus. His eyes are bright, and he says in a hard, cold voice, “But where _is_ James?” 

Remus kneels down in front of him and takes his hand again. It’s warm, almost hot, like Sirius’s hands always were. He doesn’t think he can say this standing up. He feels dizzy, a decade and a half sliding away from him, so that he's once more standing in the doorway, getting the news in the Prophet: James and Lily Potter dead; Voldemort defeated. In one day, they had won war, and he had lost everything.

How can he be the person who brings that news to Sirius?

“James Potter is dead, Sirius,” says Dumbledore, sparing Remus the task. “He died fifteen years ago.” 

Sirius looks back and forth between the three of them, and something dark and terrible passes his face: a realization. 

“And Peter?” he asks. 

Remus flinches, and Sirius inhales sharply.

“Him, too?”

“No.” Remus lets out a choked laugh. “Sirius… What do you remember?” 

Sirius doesn’t say anything for a long minute. His face has dimmed; his expression is distant. Remus doesn’t have to wonder what twisting hallways of the mind he’s wandering through. He can tell. He runs his thumb over Sirius’s knuckles, feels the familiar bumps of bone, the shape of his hand something Remus could recognize even in the dark. 

“Padfoot,” he says quietly. 

Sirius takes a deep, shuddering breath, and crumples with a sob. Remus puts his arms around him, trying to hide him from view. Sirius’s hands clutch at his robe and hold him there. Remus leans down, so that he's covering Sirius’s bent over body. 

“Padfoot,” he says again, into Sirius’s back, and then he can’t think of anything else to say. There’s nothing to say that can make it better. Fifteen years haven’t made it better. He tries to run his hand over Sirius’s hair, but the way they’re sitting makes it awkward, and his hand gets stuck on Sirius’s nape. He presses his hand down, trying to comfort. 

They stay like that for minutes. Remus feels the back of his neck and his cheeks heat up, and he feels a sudden, fierce resentment that Minerva and Dumbledore are witnessing their reunion. 

Finally, Sirius pulls away from him and straightens with a gasp. His eyes are bright and wet, but he’s no longer crying, and a red flush colors his cheekbone. He glares at Dumbledore fiercely, his pride reasserting himself. 

He keeps one hand wrapped tightly around Remus’s, though. 

“It was November,” he says. “Seventh year.” He glances at Remus, and his cheeks color more. Then he looks back at Dumbledore. “We’d just finished… The four of us, we’d just finished… a project.”

“The map,” says Remus, stunned. “We’d just finished the map.” 

They had finished it the fall of their seventh year. It had worked before then, but the final step, adding their personalities, had been Sirius’s idea – ‘so we’ll keep causing mischief, even after we’re gone.’ 

“The map?” asks Dumbledore. 

“The one Harry has,” explains Remus. He sharpens his voice as a question occurs to him. “Have you told Harry?” 

Dumbledore frowns slightly. “Not yet. I wanted you to know first.”

Remus feels at once grateful and guilty. 

“Who’s Harry?” asks Sirius. 

“James and Lily’s son,” answers Minerva. 

“Your godson,” says Remus. 

Sirius barks a laugh. “Lily? _Lily Evans?_ They actually…” He laughs again. “Merlin.” 

He goes silent. Remus squeezes his hand. 

“How is he here?” says Remus, looking up at Dumbledore. “It can’t just be the map…” 

Dumbledore touches Fawkes’ head lightly. He looks thoughtful. 

“I truly cannot say. A contact of mine at the Department of Mystery found him this morning and brought him here.” He pauses and looks at Remus gravely. “He is Sirius Black, as far as we can tell. Remus, you must realize that Voldemort will be very interested in discovering how Sirius has escaped death. Could you bring him to Grimmauld Place? He’ll be safest there.”

“What? I'm not going back there!” shouts Sirius, true panic in his eyes and voice.

“He can stay with me,” says Remus quickly.

Dumbledore raises a silvery eyebrow.

Remus forces a gentle humor into his voice, even though the only thing he wants to do is immediately take Sirius away and hide him.

“Sirius is a vindicated man, and, more importantly, a dead one. No one is going to be looking for his seventeen-year-old self."

“I should think Bellatrix has a very good idea of what a seventeen-year-old Sirius Black looks like,” says Dumbledore.

“ _She's_ still alive?” says Sirius, with an overwhelming sense of injustice. 

“Grimmauld Place killed Sirius,” says Remus calmly, decisively. “I won't let it have a second chance."

++

There is no hour darker than 5pm in late November, and the sky is full black by the time they get back to Remus’s, even the stars and the waxing moon hidden by the clouds. His house looks small and feeble in the darkness, even after Remus waves his wand and the lights come on. He felt safe here, once, but that was very, very long ago. 

Sirius is quiet, and Remus has trouble placing what kind of silence it is. Sirius had – _has_ – so many kinds of silence. Very few of them are any good. 

“Are you hungry?” asks Remus. 

Sirius shakes his head. His dark lashes are low over his eyes, and it gives him a shuttered expression. He takes in the parlor and the dining room and the small, neat kitchen just beyond. Everything is much the same as it was when Remus’s parents were alive and lived here, only shabbier. He’s never had the money nor the inclination to repair or replace anything. 

“Tea then?” 

Sirius shakes his head again. 

"Then are you tired? You can have my old room. I'm afraid it's quite dusty. It's been some time since I've had guests."

He hasn't had guests since Sirius stayed with him, that glorious summer the year after Sirius had escaped, but they hadn't needed separate bedrooms. Sirius had helped even out the slanted floor of the dining room and fixed some of the windows to be less drafty, and they had laughed over the memory of the flat they’d had together in London, before the world had shattered around them. 

Finally, Sirius looks at him. His face cracks open in a brittle, bright smile, like the thinnest crescent moon on a January night. 

"I can't say this is how I pictured getting in your bed, Moony," he says. 

Remus flushes.

“Is that really appropriate?” he says, and he winces at the tone of his voice. He sounds like he’s speaking to a student, not to the man he loved. Loves. 

Sirius laughs, short and barking and familiar enough to make Remus’s chest ache. 

“I don’t really know what’s appropriate,” he says, and there’s a hysterical edge to his voice. “Apparently I _died_ , but not now, years in the future! Or last summer! But all I can think of is that last week I kissed you! Because that's better than thinking about Prong being dead!” 

He cuts himself off and takes a deep, hitching breath.

“You did,” says Remus. He feels horribly overwhelmed. 

“Am I ever going to find out if you kissed me back?” asks Sirius, with another desperate, barking laugh. 

Of all the things he could choose to fixate on, Remus supposes this isn't a bad one. But he still doesn't want to have to negotiate it. He can sense the danger before him, like a wary traveler on marshy ground, will’o’wisps haunting the corners of his eyes. But he doesn’t know how to avoid it. Even at seventeen, Sirius could tell when Remus was lying, and Remus doesn’t think time has made him any better at it. 

And he wants to comfort Sirius. 

“I did,” he says. “After we got back from Christmas break.”

“How did it go?” asks Sirius. 

Remus almost has to laugh at the memory, if everything else weren't currently so dire. Sirius had kissed him for the first time very late on a fall night. Remus had fallen asleep over his Ancient Runes homework in the Gryffindor common room, and Sirius had woken him up. Remus remembers it like a dream, and he had half thought it was a dream at the time. The fire had ebbed to a few glowing coals, and the smell of winter and wet leaves and firewhisky had come off Sirius in waves. He’d been out, on one of his mysterious midnight jaunts that always made Remus’s stomach twist with jealousy. 

“Come to bed, Moony,” he’d said, smiling fondly, his face very close to Remus’s, and then he’d kissed him, very softly, just once, before jerking away, shocked at himself and bolted up the stairs. 

“You spent two months avoiding me,” says Remus, two months during which Sirius laughed too loudly and glittered with mania and always made sure Peter or James were in the room with them. “I’d never seen you so embarrassed. It made me think you must really like me.” 

Sirius laughs weakly and passes his hand over his face.

“Yeah,” he says. “Well. You’re not wrong.” 

“I used the map to track you down when you were alone,” says Remus. He watches Sirius’s face closely. He’s not sure what he wants to see there. “And I told you off for being a prat, and then I kissed you.” 

It had felt like the most reckless thing he’d ever done, that he would ever do, and he’d been giddy with it, especially when Sirius kissed him back. His heart had squeezed with painful hope. They spent the rest of seventh year in a haze, both sure they were each other's forever, both too naïve to realize the cracks in the foundation of their relationship had been there from the start. 

“Romantic,” says Sirius, with a smile. It’s the first genuine smile Remus has seen from him. Then he looks Remus up and down and smiles wider, a leer. “You know you are still fit.”

Remus laughs. “I was never ‘fit,’ Sirius.” 

Sirius scoffs and steps closer to him, serious intent in his eyes. Remus shakes his head and puts his hands out in front of him to block him. 

He knows this. He knows that Sirius will fling himself at the nearest bad idea to avoid his pain. He won’t take advantage of it. He takes Sirius by the shoulders and steers him gently to the sofa. 

“I’m going to make myself some tea, at least,” he says. 

He goes into the kitchen and steadies himself against the counter. He breathes deeply, to the count of ten, and then starts over. After his third count, he’s able to straighten up. He makes two mugs and brings them out. Sirius is still on the couch, but he’s bent over, his face in his hands. Remus places one mug gently in front of him, and then sits on the other end of the couch. He crosses his legs, clasps his hands on his knee, and looks at the fireplace. 

He should start the fire. It’s cold in his house. 

He makes no move to do so. From the corner of his eye, he sees Sirius shudder and sit up. He glances away. 

“Tell me everything,” rasps Sirius. “Everything that happened.” 

Remus picks up his mug and blows on his tea. He wishes he had a Pensieve, so he could show Sirius some of it, the parts that are too painful – either two sweet or too bitter – to say. Maybe Dumbledore will loan him one. 

“From seventh year on?” 

“From when you kissed me, I guess,” says Sirius.

Remus nods. 

“All right,” he says, and he sketches the sorry tale out. Maybe he’ll be able to give it color and shape later. But, right now, a skeleton is all he can bear. 

++

He stays up late that night, after Sirius has gone to bed. He finishes the editing he had hoped to work on earlier in the day, before the owls had come. By the time he’s finished, it’s past one in the morning, and he has a headache throbbing behind his eyes. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep easily, though. His mind is too full of thoughts. 

He walks to the kitchen to wash his mug and pauses as he passes the door to Sirius’s room. He hears a sound like a stifled sob. Remus doesn’t hesitate. He knocks on the door. 

“Sirius?” he says. 

He listens closely and hears what sounds like a deep, wet gasp.

He opens the door. 

Sirius sits up, eyes bright and ashamed, cheeks wet.

“Don’t – ” he says, a sudden, furious blush covering his face. And then he gasps again, and his breath comes out in a stutter. Remus stands for three seconds in the doorway, and then he crosses to the bed. He doesn’t feel in control of his own body. He sits next to Sirius and pulls him to him and holds him. 

Sirius sobs again and drops his head onto Remus’s shoulder. Sirius's tears and breath are hot against Remus's neck, and Remus doesn’t know what he could possibly say to make things better. So he holds Sirius, and tries not to lose himself in the familiar shape and smell of him. He's here to comfort Sirius. Eventually, Sirius stops crying, and he just pants, catching his breath. He has an iron grip around Remus's waist, and he presses his nose into the divot where Remus’s collarbone meets his neck. Remus tries not to react, but he feels his body go shock-still all the same. 

“Were we happy?” asks Sirius, after another long moment of silence. 

Remus runs his hand down Sirius’s hair, ashamed that he hadn’t even been able to give Sirius that much detail. Even just admitting they were happy once feels like opening a wound. 

“Sometimes,” he admits. He keeps his hand tucked against the back of Sirius’s neck. He should stop stroking his hair, he tells himself sternly. 

Sirius shifts slightly. He keeps his head on Remus’s shoulder, but he pulls away just enough that he can see some of Remus’s expression. 

“But sometimes we weren’t.” 

Remus shakes his head and tries to find the words. 

“No one’s happy all the time, Sirius. And… towards the end of the First War, things fell apart rather badly. Rather quickly. I thought you were a spy, and you thought the same of me.” 

Sirius breathes in sharply. 

“Why would we think that?” 

“You don’t know,” says Remus, laughing, miserable, “how awful it got.” 

“So tell me!” says Sirius. He sits up fully, eyes dark, scowling. Remus immediately misses having Sirius against him.

He shakes his head. He doesn’t have the words for this. He keeps his head down. He can’t look at Sirius. But he can tell Sirius is watching him. 

It hadn’t been just one thing, but the accumulated weight of many. Sirius was reckless and casually cruel, and Remus was secretive and deliberately cruel, and neither of them had ever learned to be kind to themselves. He remembers one of the last, ugly days of the war, two weeks before Harry’s first birthday, when the sun had been a brutal eye. He’d been living in a camp of werewolves for the past three weeks, trying to turn them against Voldemort, or at least keep them from joining, and returned to a stifling London that stank of sweat and grime, an apartment full of dirty dishes, the fridge full of spoiled food, and the news that Fabian and Gideon Prewett were dead. He’d yelled at Sirius about the dishes, been too numb to say anything about the Prewetts, and gone to bed. When he woke up, the sky was dark, and Sirius was awake beside him. He’d sat up and asked Remus if he were capable of feeling anything at all. 

“There’s a difference between not having feelings and being an adult,” Remus had said indifferently, and he’d rolled onto his side, away from Sirius. “Maybe one day you’ll stop having tantrums long enough to realize that.” 

He can’t explain any of that to Sirius, not to Sirius at seventeen. He keeps staring at his hands. Sirius lets out a short, contemptuous laugh.

“I never would have figured Wormtail to have the courage to turn spy,” he says bitterly. 

“None of us did.” 

“He loved James,” says Sirius. He pauses. “We really… We all fell apart, like that?” 

“Hogwarts isn’t forever, Padfoot.” 

Sirius flops backward onto the bed and stares at the ceiling.

“I just can’t imagine it,” he says. 

Remus shrugs helplessly. Even having lived through it, its's impossible to describe the dark, claustrophobic terror and insidious, paranoid fear that had ripped them all apart. He still has nightmares of the First War – vague, ominous nightmares full of waiting and dread, where he walks through endless hallways filled with the dead. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s all he can offer. He still isn’t able to look at Sirius. "I really, really am."

He gets up to leave, and Sirius shoots up, grabs his arm. 

“Don’t,” he says, half commanding, half pleading. 

Remus hesitates, and that hesitation is enough for Sirius to drag him down beside him.

“We don’t have to do anything,” says Sirius desperately. He keeps his hand on Remus’s arm, but he doesn’t touch him otherwise. “Just don’t go.” 

Remus touches his hair lightly where it curls behind his ear. Sirius’s eyes are still red from crying. 

“Just for tonight,” he says carefully, and Sirius nods, still desperate. Remus settles himself down more comfortably, lying on his side, facing Sirius. He wants to turn his back to him, but even he’s not that cruel. Sirius adjusts, too, onto his side, facing Remus. They don’t touch. There are inches between them. Remus waves his wand to pull the comforter up over them both. 

He looks at Sirius and takes in his high cheekbones and his storm gray eyes and the elegant turn of his mouth, the almost-perfect symmetry of his face, broken only by a beauty mark high on one cheek, the slightly crooked angle of one canine when he smiles. Remus had been fourteen the first time he looked at Sirius and felt his body turn to air. Sirius was unfairly, impossibly beautiful. Even now, with his eyes cracked red and strands of his hair sticking to his damp face, he’s beautiful. The Sirius who came back to him after Azkaban hadn’t been, but he had been just as brilliant, just as reckless, just as Remus’s as he’d ever been, and Remus had loved him all the same. 

They watch each other until their breathing syncs, until Remus’s eyelids get heavy, and then he watches Sirius as if through the clicking shutters of a camera, a long darkness, a brilliant light, a long darkness, Sirius, a long darkness, and he sleeps. 

++

The bed is empty when he wakes up. He groans and throws an arm over his face to block the light. He must not have closed the curtain. He has no idea what time it is, and he has the vague, stuffed-head feeling of having overslept. Sirius always let him sleep in too much, he thinks dimly, pleasantly. 

And then he sits up abruptly. Sirius. Panic grips his throat and forces him from the bed, propels him out of the room. Is Sirius still here? Remus isn’t even sure what he’s afraid has happened – if he’s afraid whatever magic brought Sirius back to him has already snatched him away, or if he’s afraid that Sirius has left of his own free will. He’s just afraid. He bolts down the hallway and into the living room, calling Sirius’s name. He skids to a halt.

Sirius is standing in the middle of the living room. He stares at Remus and raises one eyebrow. He seems like he’s been caught in the middle of something, his body tensed with potential action. Remus realizes he must have been pacing. 

“Are you all right?” asks Sirius. 

Remus walks to the couch and sinks down onto it. He can still feel his heartbeat in his throat. 

“Yes,” he says. “I just… I was worried you had left.” 

Sirius barks out a laugh and turns on his heel. He stalks to the fireplace. 

“Where is there for me to go?” he says. He leans against the mantle and glares at Remus. He looks like he’s stepped out of a Gothic novel - pale and melancholy and furious, with his dark hair swept back, falling to his collar, his eyebrows drawn low. 

“I don’t know,” says Remus, even though he once watched the darkness swallow Sirius whole. 

Sirius shakes his head, like a dog shaking off water, and stalks to the window. He’s overflowing with a brittle, nervous energy. His whole body seems to vibrate faintly with it. It’s like the smell of ozone before a storm, like the ragged dark edge of rain dropping to the distant horizon, the wind picking up and the leaves all scattering.

Remus waits, tensed. 

“I just don’t get it,” snarls Sirius. “None of it! Why I’m here! What happened! That Peter could do that!” 

He cuts himself off with a swallowed growl and a sharp hand gesture, as if he were trying to slash away all the parts that make no sense. He turns to Remus again. The slanting morning light from the window behind turns his form into a shadow. Remus can’t quite make out his face. 

“There has to be something we can do about it!” 

“About what?” says Remus. He rubs his hand across his eyes. His dull headache is starting to crystallize, sharpen. 

“About all of it!” bellows Sirius. He slams his fist into his palm and stalks to the hallway. “You said – you said you were in the Order. That we all were. It still exists, right? What are they doing?”

“Waiting, mostly,” says Remus, slumping back against the couch. “Preparing. Gathering intelligence.” 

“They should be hunting Death Eaters down in the street and killing them!” howls Sirius. “It’s not like we don’t know who they are!” He laughs sharply. “My cousin, right? Bellatrix? Her husband. His brother. The Malfoys. Everyone I grew up with. All those cunts.” He pauses. His mouth curls downwards, and his eyes cut away from Remus, to the fireplace. His voice gets much softer. “Regulus, I assume.” 

“Oh,” says Remus. He hadn’t told him. There had been too much to say. 

Sirius stares at him. 

“Oh?” he says, with a narrow, focused look.

Remus forces himself to meet his gaze. 

“Regulus… disappeared,” he says. “During the First War. We never found out what happened to him. But he – yes. He was a Death Eater.” 

Sirius had shattered every plate in their apartment when he’d learned, and then gone out, not come back until the first creep of dawn, soaked out of his mind, a bloody gash on his cheek and both eyes blacked. Remus had fallen asleep on the couch waiting for him. 

They never spoke about it. Remus never knew what to say to Sirius about his family. Once, last year, they’d gotten close, when Remus had found Sirius slumped on the wall by his family’s tapestry, an empty bottle of wine by his side. 

“I wish I could have saved him,” Sirius had told him, as Remus sat down next to him and gently drawn Sirius close. He’d thought Sirius had meant Regulus, but he could just as easily have been referring to James. 

“Well,” says Sirius, after a long pause. He stands partly hunched, hands twisted, claw-like. “I guess at least one of us made ol’ Mum and Da proud then.” 

Remus rises from his couch, because he knows this stillness is more dangerous than the pacing and the ranting. He puts his hand on Sirius’s shoulder. Sirius flinches, but Remus keeps his grip firm. 

“Are you going to do something?” he asks. “Please don’t do anything stupid.” 

Sirius laughs hollowly. His face is bloodless, and he twists in Remus’s grasp, restless and helpless. 

“How can you do it?” he asks finally, stilling again, staring at Remus with burning eyes. 

“Do what?” asks Remus. 

Sirius jerks away from him and raises his arm, furious. He grabs at his hair. His eyes show white all the way around. 

“Keep going! With everything that’s happened! How can you keep going?” 

Remus laughs sharply. He puts his hand to his head and presses down against the headache. 

“What else can I do? I can’t keep going, Sirius, but I have to.”

It’s what he’s always done. The world has wanted him dead since he was six. He’s never thought about why he’s kept going; he’s been too busy doing it. Maybe that’s limited him. It’s certainly warped him. But it’s also the only reason he’s still alive. Take his body, take his heart – still, he’s limped on. 

Some of this must show in Remus’s face, because Sirius’s shoulders drop. 

“Oh, Moony,” he says. The fury and anguish leave his face, replaced by an even more awful pity. “How long have you been alone?”

He steps back to Remus and touches Remus's face high on his cheekbone. Then he spreads his palm and cups Remus’s cheek. Remus shudders. He wants to lean into that touch. He pulls away. 

“I have to go to Diagon Alley to send an owl,” he says briskly. He pauses, unsure if he should voice his question. 

Sirius gives him an expectant look. He doesn’t look angry that Remus pulled away, which is both a surprise and a relief. “Go ahead and spit out whatever it is you’re going to say.”

“Will you still be here when I get back?” 

“Yes,” says Sirius quietly. His mouth twists. “I will.” 

++

Remus sends the manuscript back to the publisher with his notes, and then he wanders down Diagon Alley, lost in thought. Now that he has Sirius, he has to figure out what to do with him. He won’t send him back to Grimmauld Place, but he also knows he can’t keep Sirius out of the war. Maybe he’ll want to go back to Hogwarts to finish out his education. Dumbledore could make sure it happened unobtrusively, set up a different name and life for Sirius. It wouldn’t keep Sirius safe for long, but six months isn’t nothing. And that would give Remus space and perspective. 

When he returns home, he walks into the parlor to see Sirius stringing fairy lights. There’s a fire going in the fireplace, and Muggle Christmas tunes warble from the radio that Remus still thinks of as his mother’s. A tree stands in the corner, already decked with baubles. Paper snowflakes cover the windows. 

“What are you doing?” asks Remus. 

“I’m decorating,” says Sirius. He has a Father Christmas hat on his head. “For Christmas. I should think that was obvious, Moony. It’s December in less than a week.”

There’s a familiar, manic glow to Sirius’s features. Remus knows he’s lucky that, so far, Sirius’s rage and energy have been channeled into Christmas preparations. 

“Where did you get all this?” he asks, bemused. The nearest town is a two mile walk away, and he doesn’t think Sirius is familiar enough with it to apparate to. 

“Transfigured it,” says Sirius cheerfully. He gestures at the ornaments on the tree. “You only have two mugs left now. Sorry.” 

Remus laughs. 

“I guess we only need two.” 

He lingers just inside the doorway, watching Sirius work. He’s impressed that Sirius has been able to do so much without a wand, even if Sirius has always been clever, especially at transfiguration.

“Would you like to go to Hogwarts?” he asks, after a moment. 

“What for?” asks Sirius. He’s twining lights around the legs of the dining table. 

“To meet Harry,” says Remus. Harry should know Sirius is back, anyway, and maybe meeting him will prompt Sirius to start back at school.

Sirius pauses what he’s doing and looks up at Remus. The fairy lights cast odd shadows on his face, but Remus reads uncertainty there.

“When?” he asks.

“Whenever you’re ready,” says Remus. 

Sirius nods and resumes his work. 

“Maybe tomorrow,” he says. 

++

They end up going to Diagon Alley the next day instead. It’s risky, but Sirius needs a wand and robes, and Remus knows he can’t keep Sirius hidden away. He does charm Sirius’s hair blond, though, as a precaution. No one will be looking for a seventeen-year-old Sirius Black, but they really won’t be looking for a blond one. Sirius scowls when he sees his reflection. 

“I look like Narcissa,” he complains. 

Remus tosses him a green, knitted cap in response, one of the avalanche of goods and meals that Molly had plied him with after Sirius’s death. 

Sirius snorts when he pulls it on. 

“Oh, good,” he says. “Green. Now I really look like Narcissa.”

“At least you’re prettier than her.” 

Their eyes catch in the mirror as soon as the words are out of Remus’s mouth. He’s horrified. He didn’t think about them. He’s already too secure around this Sirius, lulled into a familiar, easy needling and affection. 

They both blush and look away. 

++

They walk through Muggle London on their way to Diagon Alley, and Remus feels a line of tension form in his shoulders. No one is watching them, but a few people do glance at them, struck maybe, by Sirius’s good looks, his easy grace. Remus wonders what they see. 

Do they see him, old and tired, with a man young enough to be his son? Do they see what Remus’s mother feared when he told her he was gay? “There’s just so many men out there,” she’d told him, with tears in her eyes, “that might take advantage of you for this.” It hadn’t mattered he’d already been dating Sirius for a year, and she’d never really liked Sirius after she found out. 

It twists at Remus sometimes: he’s been hated almost all his life. He should be used to hatred. But being hated has only made him quick to hide, desperate to please. 

His thoughts are unpleasant company, and he tries to force himself away from them, and focus on Sirius, who keeps up a steady stream of talk. Remus hasn’t realized how much the Muggle world has changed in twenty years, but Sirius’s wide eyes and questions make him realize how very different the Muggle world is. It strikes him as funny. The wizarding world is stuck fighting the same war, the only difference the names of the dead, and the Muggle world has gone on cheerfully, obliviously, into the future.

He has a moment of pause when they get to Ollivander’s. The man inside is not Ollivander, and then Remus remembers with a start that Ollivander has been missing since July. 

The man looks at them both oddly, and Remus sees his hand go immediately to his wand. He clearly wasn’t expecting two adult men to walk into the shop. 

“Sorry,” says Remus. He tries a placating smile. “We didn’t mean to startle you. Only my… friend has lost his wand.” He pauses. “Are you… related to Ollivander? 

The man nods. “Yes. He’s my uncle. Great-uncle.” He glances between them both, still looking suspicious. “You’ve lost your wand?” he says to Sirius. 

Sirius blasts a smile at him. 

“You’d think I’d be old enough to know better by now,” he says. “But, live and learn.” 

Remus doesn’t laugh. The man sort of grimaces, an attempt at a smile. 

“Of course. Well. Let’s get you measured then.” 

Remus watches the process curiously. Sirius’s old wand had been blackthorn and dragon heartstring, a dark and rigid and clever wand. They go through several wands, and the new Ollivander seems more and more perplexed, but at least he no longer seems frightened of them. 

“Try this,” he says, after a dozen wands have been discarded. “Phoenix feather and yew. It’s, uh, unusual, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen a wand react like these have to you.” 

Sirius touches the wand and gives it a wave. Remus feels the hair on the back of his neck stand. There’s a strange hush, like that of standing in a great, stone ruin or an ancient forest. It’s the feeling of presence of old magic, raw magic, the wand a stream breaking off from whatever great river it is wizards can tap into. 

Sparks burst from the wand, and a wind whips through the shop. Sirius lowers the wand, his eyebrows faintly raised. 

“Well, I think that’s decisive,” he says. 

++

“Phoenix feather and yew,” says Sirius, as they walk down the street to Madam Malkin’s. “What do you think that means?” 

“Rebirth,” says Remus, after a pause. He doesn’t quite smile. “You would pick a wand with a bad sense of humor.” 

Sirius laughs and shakes his head, and then he looks up and down the street curiously. 

“I’ve never seen it this dead,” he says. “Especially not this close to Christmas.” 

He twists his head around some more, as if by looking he could summon the usual bustling, festive crowds. 

“People are scared,” says Remus. He sees a figure turn, in the direction of Knockturn Alley, and quickens his pace. 

Sirius matches his stride to Remus's. His face is twisted in an unhappy grimace. 

“Right,” he says. He tilts his head back and squints at the sky. It’s gray, but the clouds are too high and thin for snow. He seems on the verge of saying something else, and Remus waits patiently. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he says finally. “That I could probably meet Harry.” 

"Oh." Remus nods, and he feels a sudden, odd, spike of fear. He shoves it down. “We’ll send an owl to Dumbledore, then.” 

He mulls on why he’s worried all through Sirius’s robes-fitting. Is it just that he thinks Sirius will – yet again – act as if Harry were James?

++

“Shall we try your new wand out?” asks Remus, once they’re home. 

Sirius grins ferociously. 

“Are you challenging me to a duel, Moony? I thought you didn’t approve of those.” 

“I approve of anything that will keep us alive,” says Remus primly. “I just didn’t like when you and Prongs destroyed our bloody room pretending to be Aurors.” 

Sirius twirls his new wand in his hand and then points it at Remus. 

“Shall we go outside then?” he asks, smirking.

It’s dark outside, and cold, and the grass is wet from a fine drizzle that ended just as they came home. Remus sends up a few globes of glowing light, and it lends a fairytale cast to the scene. Sirius’s face glows golden. He tosses his dark hair out of his eyes and smiles.

“Ready?” he says. His breath floats around him like mist. 

Remus takes a defensive stance. 

“Ready,” he says back. 

Sirius fires off a jelly-leg jinx, and Remus parries it easily. Sirius has always been quick, and his youth makes him quicker. But Remus has the advantage of experience, and he’s always been more patient than Sirius ever was, let alone Sirius at seventeen. He keeps parrying and shielding and lets Sirius bring the attack to him. Sirius dances and weaves, but Remus keeps his eyes on Sirius’s shoulder and always knows just when Sirius is about to fire off another blast. He waits for Sirius to make a mistake. 

And then Sirius does. He takes too large a step forward and his foot skids on the wet grass. His eyes go round and he falls back, arms wind-milling twice. Remus freezes, his breath trapped in his throat, and an awful double vision plays – Sirius laughing in the Department of Ministry, Sirius struck, Sirius falling, and then just the Veil left behind. 

Sirius lands with a thump, and lets out a great ring of laughter. 

Remus rushes forward. 

“Are you all right?” he asks, bending down to check on him. 

Sirius looks up at him with a smile, and then he lunges forward and grabs Remus’s arm and yanks him down. Remus yelps and stumbles, and then his feet slide on the wet grass, and he goes tumbling over, landing hard beside Sirius. 

He presses his face into the ground and starts to laugh, breathless and hysterical. 

“Moony?” says Sirius from above him, alarmed. “Moony – are you all right?” 

Remus keeps laughing. He shakes his head, trying to convey that there’s nothing to worry about. There are tears in his eyes, and his stomach is starting to hurt. 

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” says Sirius. He shakes Remus’s shoulder. “Remus?” 

“No,” wheezes out Remus. He presses his face into the ground some more, feels the cold sting of the grass against his cheek. Sirius keeps his hand on his shoulder. “No. Everything is fine, Sirius. Really.” 

++

Sirius is nervous about meeting Harry. He doesn’t show it obviously, but even now Remus knows him well enough to read the signs. He’s silent that morning at breakfast, hunched over his tea. Remus talks to him in neutral tones about everything besides Harry. 

Sirius had cried, the first time he met Harry, in the maternity ward at St. Mungo’s, with Harry held tightly in Lily’s arm, and James beside her, as dazed and happy as a man on drugs. Remus had cried, too. Harry’s birth had felt like the first happy thing in a year. 

Sirius only gets tenser the closer they get to Hogwarts. They’re met by Tonks in Hogsmeade, by the Shrieking Shack. She takes one look at Sirius and then hugs him and bursts into tears. 

“Dora?” says Sirius, stunned, once he realizes who she is. “Baby Dora?” 

“I go by Tonks, actually,” wails Tonks through her tears. “Does Mum know? Merlin, Mum is going to explode. After your name got cleared, she said she always reckoned it’d been a set-up.” 

“Dromeda’s still alive?” says Sirius, joy leaping his voice. He looks at Remus from over the top of Tonks’s head. 

“Yes,” says Remus, chagrined. “Sorry, I forgot to – ”

“It’s all right,” says Sirius quickly. He gives Tonks an awkward pat on the back, and she finally pulls away. She wipes at her eyes with a sniff. “I know I’ve missed a lot. I just.” He beams. “That’s good news.” 

“We’ll find a way for you two to catch up,” says Remus gently. 

“I’d like that,” says Sirius. He turns his beam on Tonks and laughs brightly. “Merlin. You’re really all grown up.” 

Tonks smiles weakly. “I know. I bet I was yea high last time you saw me.” 

“Something like that,” agrees Sirius, and Remus is struck by how _nice_ it is to see Sirius smiling so easily and so happily. It's been a long time.

Sirius and Tonks don’t have long to catch up, though. She ushers them into a thestral-drawn carriage – “Just as a precaution” – and promises that she’ll catch up with Sirius more at the next Order meeting. 

“Order?” says Sirius, when they’re alone in the carriage together. “She means the Order of the Phoenix, right? She’s in it, too?” 

“Yes,” says Remus. 

“And you’re in it. And I’m in it.” He glares at Remus, like he’s expecting Remus to argue. Remus doesn’t, and Sirius smirks. “So when’s the next meeting?” 

Remus can all but see the visions of dueling with Death Eaters flitting through Sirius's mind. He can almost smell Sirius’s anticipation. He wants to warn him, but he knows Sirius won’t believe him, and he doesn’t have the heart to take from this Sirius what he already knows the war will. 

“A couple days after the next moon,” says Remus, and he turns his head to watch Hogsmeade pass them by. 

++

They meet Harry in Dumbledore’s office. To Remus’s surprise, Ron and Hermione are with him. But, perhaps Harry was too nervous to do this alone. He smiles at the three of them fondly, but they’re all fixed on Sirius. 

There's a moment of tension, and then Hermione lets out a yelp and rushes forward. She throws her arms around Sirius. Remus stifles a laugh as Sirius's back stiffens. Ron hugs him next, moving in as soon a Hermione has stepped aside. There are tears in her eyes, and Remus does her the courtesy of looking away. Harry stays back, frowning slightly. Then, when Ron finally lets go of Sirius, he steps forward and offers his hand. 

Remus sees Sirius’s eyes widen and his throat catch as he gets a good look at Harry. 

“Merlin,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Harry. He looks Sirius over, just as stunned. “I know.” 

Sirius takes his hand and shakes it. He swallows audibly. 

“It’s good to meet you,” he says. “Harry.” 

Dumbledore touches Remus’s elbow then, drawing him away to talk privately behind his desk. 

“How is he adjusting?” he asks. 

“As well as can be expected,” says Remus with a shrug. “He hasn’t tried to murder anyone. Though I think he'd like to.” 

Dumbledore smiles without humor. He seems weaker and more tired than Remus has ever seen him, and he’s holding one of his hands close to his chest. Remus takes this all in and doesn’t react to it. He trusts Dumbledore to know his own business, and Remus has other things to worry about. 

That thought jolts him, though. Three days ago he just wouldn’t have had the capacity to care, not been too busy caring about something else. 

“I’m sure he’ll have plenty of opportunities before this is all over,” says Dumbledore. He lowers his voice. “The Department of Mysteries is aware that something happened. I’ve had a letter from my contact there that they’re conducting an investigation.” 

“Oh,” says Remus. He takes a deep breath and straightens his shoulder. “If they figure out it was Sirius, I won’t let them take him.”

“Nor would I expect you to,” says Dumbledore with another thin, humorless smile. “I am merely passing on the knowledge.” 

“He’s still not going back to Grimmauld Place,” snaps Remus. He doesn’t care if he’ll have to fight the whole Ministry and every Death Eater to keep Sirius safe and out of another prison. He will. 

“I understand,” says Dumbledore. “I do. It’s terrible to keep someone you love locked away, even if it is for their own good.” 

Remus says nothing. He doesn’t see how Dumbledore could possibly understand.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” says Dumbledore after it becomes clear Remus isn’t going to speak. 

Remus feels his irritation dim a bit. He is grateful to Dumbledore, for everything he has done for him personally, and for the fact that he did bring Sirius back to him. 

“Could I borrow your Pensieve?” he asks. 

“Ah.” Dumbledore’s eyes flick once, to Harry. “I’m afraid I have need of it for the foreseeable future. But I’ll see if I can dig one up.”

Remus looks at Harry, too. He’s standing next to Ron, whose head is bent close to Sirius’s. Remus hears the occasional Quidditch fact waft over. Ron is apparently updating Sirius on nearly two decades of Quidditch news. Sirius seems to be listening intently, but, every so often, he looks away, looks at Harry. Hermione stands next to Harry, her hands clutching his arm, and Remus hears, once, “Honestly, Ron, he doesn’t want to hear about _Quidditch_.” 

Harry just looks stunned. 

Watching the four of them, Remus realizes why he was so worried about this meeting. Sirius is barely older than Harry – barely older than James’s son. Of course he’ll want to come back to Hogwarts. Of course he’ll want to have friends. Of course he'll want as normal and as real a life as he can. 

But, selfishly, Remus wants him to stay. With him. 

++

They take a secret passageway back to Hogsmeade, again as a precaution. Harry loans them James's old invisibility cloak and advises them to just leave it in the statue of the one-eyed witch. 

It’s a close fit, and Remus is intensely aware of the heat and press of Sirius’s body. Sirius stifles a horrible laugh as they creep through the hallway. Remus doesn’t comment on it until they’re safely inside the passageway. 

“Is something wrong?” he asks, once he’s managed to get several feet between him and Sirius. 

Sirius doesn’t say anything at first. He holds the invisibility cloak out before him and studies it. 

“I’m glad Harry has this,” he says. His voice is high and choked. “He has the map, too?” 

“Yes,” says Remus. He watches Sirius warily. Sirius’s back is to him, and his shoulders are a tight line. It looks like his hands are shaking. 

“Padfoot,” he says gently, and he steps forward and touches Sirius on the shoulder. 

Sirius turns abruptly and all but flings himself into Remus’s chest. Remus puts his arms around him, surprised. Sirius presses his face into Remus’s shoulder with a half-laugh, half-sob. 

“We were just doing this a week ago,” he says. “Only it wasn’t a week ago. I hate this. I feel – ”

He breaks off abruptly with another sob, and he shakes all over now. Remus presses his face into his hair and holds him, once again at a loss for words. 

“I feel like I’ve lost everything,” says Sirius, almost too soft to hear. “I don’t feel like any of this is real.” 

“I’m sorry,” says Remus. “I know.”

His chest aches. He leans against Sirius, propping him up against the wall of the passageway, and brackets his forearms along either side of his face and looks at him. The stones of the castle are cool against his arms. Sirius’s eyes are wild and panicked, like a trapped animal’s. Remus hopes that maybe simple, physical touch will be enough to soothe him. Sometimes, with Sirius, it was. It is. 

“Moony,” whispers Sirius hoarsely. He brings his hand up and pushes Remus’s hair back from his face. Remus winces. How old he must look to Sirius, he thinks, how tired. 

“Moony,” he says again, brokenly. “I’m glad you’re here at least. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t.” 

Remus attempts a smile. He’s sure it’s unsuccessful. 

“Yes. It’ll just be me and my books and the roaches at the end of everything.”

“I always knew you were stronger than the rest of us,” says Sirius, and the way he looks at Remus makes Remus’s cheeks burn with shame and want to look away. He was never as good as Sirius believes him to be. Numbness isn't real strength. 

“I always knew you were a terrible flatterer,” says Remus, attempting a joke. It even sort of works. Sirius laughs feebly and takes a deep breath. 

“Someday you’ll believe me,” says Sirius, and he straightens up and raises his eyebrows at Remus. “Maybe in another twenty years,” he adds dryly. 

Remus laughs, and he startles himself that he’s able to do so. He pulls away from Sirius and gives him another moment to compose himself. Sirius has always been this way, he knows, jumping easily from some terrible calamity of emotions to a cheerful calm. It makes Remus as wary as it ever did, but he won’t push Sirius on it now. 

They walk in thoughtful silence for a couple minutes, and then Sirius speaks. 

“He has – ”

“Lily's eyes, yes.”

Sirius grins, cocky and beautiful and familiar. Any sign that he had been sobbing a scant five minutes ago is gone.

“I was going to say James's nose.”

Remus laughs. He smiles at Sirius fondly.

“He does. But, he's more like Lily than James overall.”

Sirius makes a neutral sound. Remus remembers that Sirius, at seventeen, still didn't like Lily. The two circled each other like cats. They'd almost died in a Death Eater firefight before they were able to become friends. Remus has no ability to convey to Sirius how important that friendship became to them both, and he feels a pang of regret he wasn’t able to get the Pensieve from Dumbledore. He can remember Sirius and Lily, on the Potters’ couch in Godric’s Hollow, one bright head and one dark, bent over the crossword puzzle in the Daily Prophet, arguing fiercely and then both walking away with smiles on their face. Their whole friendship had been like that: combative, warm, full of laughter. 

“I'm sure he's not bad as Evans,” says Sirius, “if he has any Prongs in him. And, as his godfather, it's my responsibility to see he actually has a sense of humor.”

“Don't be a bad influence, Padfoot.”

Sirius grins.

“Was I a bad influence on you?”

Remus has to smile, too. “The worst.”

Sirius's grin turns diabolical. “Good. You needed it.” 

Remus realizes that he’s still smiling. Even after his memories of Sirius and Lily’s friendship, his fond smile hasn’t faded. It seems stuck on his face, his happiness and affection too strong for even those old memories to hurt more than a passing pang. 

“If you want,” says Remus carefully, after a few more minutes, “you could go back after winter holidays. Finish your education.” 

Sirius seems to consider this. He tilts his head back. His hair curls ever so slightly where it meets his collar. It’s shiny and looks soft to the touch. Remus finds himself staring at it, at the sharp line of Sirius’s jaw, at the elegant disarray of his robes, with the same, gnawing feeling he had at seventeen. He knows what he wants Sirius to say. 

“How many NEWTs did I get?” asks Sirius. 

Remus looks at him in surprise. 

“Merlin, Sirius, you expect me to remember that?”

“Yes,” says Sirius decisively. “I know I must have bragged your ear off about them.” 

Remus’s mouth quirks at one corner. “One more than James,” he admits. “Eleven in all, I think.” 

Sirius nods; a small, satisfied smile plays at his mouth. 

“Sounds like I know enough, then. I don’t see what another six months will do.”

“Are you sure?” asks Remus, because he knows he's obliged to. 

It had been hard enough to get Sirius to take his NEWTs the first time around. James had had to talk him out of dropping out. Sirius had been too set on fighting the war. Remus doesn't think he'll be able to talk him into taking them a second time, even if Remus actually wanted to.

“Why do you always ask me that?” says Sirius with a bemused look. 

Remus is momentarily stung into silence. He doesn't think he’d had a bad habit of that at seventeen. But he supposes he must be remembering wrong. 

“I just want to know you’re sure,” he says. 

Sirius scowls at him. “When have I ever not been sure?” 

“That’s the issue,” says Remus with a sigh. “You’ve never had a second-thought in your life.” 

Sirius’s mouth flicks up into a wry smile, and Remus realizes too late he’s hit a tender mark. 

“Maybe you were too busy having them for me,” says Sirius lightly. He walks several paces ahead. 

Remus sighs again, and, at his sigh, Sirius turns sharply, a dark fury crackling across his features. His good mood vanished as abruptly and totally as it came, his feelings and expressions always as fickle, as brutal as summer weather

“Do you even want me to stay with you?” he demands. 

Remus stops. He opens his mouth to answer, then pauses, unsure of what to say. He wants Sirius to stay. He absolutely does. He’s just not convinced that’s what’s best for Sirius. 

“No second thoughts,” snarls Sirius. “Do you want me to stay with you or not?” 

Sirius had asked him a similar question once, right before they fell apart, and Remus’s hesitation then had been damning. He feels dizzy once more as the years slide into each other, overlap. Is this a torture designed to test him, or a second chance – a third chance – at doing things right?

“Of course I want you to stay,” he says softly.

Sirius’s face transforms dramatically yet again. He looks stricken, his mouth half-open, his eyes wide beneath his dropped brows. 

“That’s all I wanted you to say,” he says, and he steps forward and takes Remus’s hands, and he kisses him. Remus almost gasps. It’s like being kicked in the chest. He grabs Sirius’s arms, but he doesn’t know if he’s trying to push him away or hold him closer. He feels Sirius’s muscles jump beneath his hands. He kisses him back, hard and desperate. 

He missed this, he thinks. He missed this. He missed this. He missed Sirius. He missed Sirius kissing him, and Sirius’s laughter, and even Sirius’s awful, shifting moods. He’s missed it all for more of his life than he ever actually had any of it. He half-laughs at that thought, and Sirius growls in response and pushes Remus firmly into the wall and kisses him harder. Remus bites his lower lip gently, and Sirius moans. He slips his tongue between Remus’s lips. 

It’s enough of a shock to make Remus finally shove Sirius away. Sirius staggers. More, Remus thinks, from the emotional blow than the physical one. His eyes are wide, wounded. 

“What the fuck?” he says, ragged. 

“I can’t,” says Remus. He laughs hysterically. He covers his mouth with his hands. “Merlin, Sirius. I can’t.” 

“Why not?” says Sirius. 

“Because!” shouts Remus. "Isn't it obvious?"

There are a million reasons because: because Sirius is too young, because he’s alone and scared and Remus won’t take advantage of him, because he can’t bear to have Sirius and lose him again. 

Sirius stares at him, black-eyed, red-mouthed, trembling. Remus looks away. 

“We should go,” he says, as gently as he can. He's suddenly, deeply ashamed. “We should get home.” 

Sirius doesn’t say anything, just falls into step behind him. They walk the rest of the way in total, abysmal silence, and from the basement of Honeyduke’s, apparate home. 

They’re both still quiet as they go inside. Remus braces himself for whatever storm is about to burst upon him. It doesn’t come. Sirius goes to the fireplace and starts it, then stands beside it, peering into the flames. Remus watches him for a moment and then goes into the kitchen to make tea. 

When he comes back, Sirius is still staring into the fire. Remus sits on the couch, unsure if he should say Sirius’s name or give him his space. 

Sirius makes the decision for him. He turns, and Remus flinches when he sees that Sirius has been quietly crying. 

“Padfoot…” he begins uncertainly. He keeps his hands cupped around his mug and holds his mug in his lap. A barrier, just in case. 

Sirius tugs at his hair despairingly and laughs. 

“I just kissed you a week ago,” he says. “I didn’t even mean to – I mean, I wanted to. Merlin, I’ve wanted to for ages. And you just – when I saw you asleep I thought I’d bloody die if I didn’t kiss you. And now I’m here, and we – we were in love, it sounds like. Really awful, wonderful love. And I don’t – I don’t know that. I don’t have that. I'm not going to get that. It’s like you loved a totally different person.” 

Remus listens to this all without reacting. He just bows his head. He's as much a ghost to Sirius, he realizes, as Sirius is to him. 

“Did you love me?” demands Sirius, when Remus doesn't respond. “You said you want me to stay. But did you love me?”

Remus’s jerks his head up. He nearly drops his mug. He feels like he’s been stabbed. 

“Yes," he says, incredulous. “Merlin, Padfoot. Yes.” He laughs hollowly. “You’re the only person I’ve ever loved.” 

“Then could you love me now?” says Sirius, an awful, vulnerable hope in his eyes. “Or love me still?” 

Remus puts his mug down and covers his face. It's like being stabbed again.

“Yes,” he says, through his hands. How couldn’t he love Sirius? Even when he had hated Sirius for betraying James and Lily, for killing Peter, he’d still loved him, and hated himself all the more for it. He was a monster who loved a monster, though he knows now he’s just a monster who loved a man – a fallible, mortal man. 

Sirius lets out a shaky breath. “So why – ”

He cuts himself off with a small laugh. 

“No,” he says. He sounds very tired. Remus doesn’t dare look at him. “Actually, no. I don’t think I want to hear the why right now."

Remus senses him linger for a moment, but he doesn't look up. He doesn’t dare respond. He stays seated, his face in his hands. He's not even sure what he's scared of any more. It's been half a year since he last felt fear - since he last felt anything at all.

He hears Sirius mutter a curse, then sigh. "Good night, Moony,” he says. 

And then Remus listens as Sirius walks to bed alone.


	2. Chapter 2

Sirius is awake when Remus comes out of his room the next morning, but he’s curled up on the sofa as Padfoot. He lifts his head to glare balefully at Remus and lets out a small, canine huff, then lowers his head. Remus sighs. 

“So this is how it’s going to be?” he asks. 

Padfoot thumps his tail once, decisively, against the couch. That’s a yes. Remus raises his eyebrows, but he’s not annoyed, he realizes, even though Sirius’s tendency to hide as Padfoot when he’s feeling scorned has always been annoying. It’s also endearing. It’s also something Remus has missed. 

He’s struck, though, by how much younger Padfoot looks now than he does in Remus’s memory. He hadn’t realized that Padfoot had grown older, just as Sirius had. There are no flecks of white in this Padfoot’s muzzle; his coat is glossier, his paws just slightly too large for the rest of him. 

He walks to the couch and pats Padfoot on the head. Padfoot shakes his head, disgruntled. 

“Have it your way then,” says Remus, and he settles on the other end of the couch with a stack of letters. He has some correspondences to catch up on, mainly letters to some of his surviving werewolf contacts from the last war. 

He keeps getting distracted by Padfoot though, still tucked in a sullen ball. He wants to put his hand on his fur or rub his ears or just be beside him. He keeps thinking about kissing Sirius the day before. 

Outside, it’s a dim, dull sort of day, the kind of gray that bleaches everything out, so that even though the fairy lights are on, they don’t seem to cast much light. The Christmas decorations all look similarly feeble and washed out.

Then, a little before noon, a great white owl knocks at the kitchen window. Remus immediately recognizes the owl as Harry’s. 

“You have a letter,” Remus informs Padfoot, a minute later. “From Harry.” 

In an instant, the dog is replaced by Sirius. He springs from the couch and snatches the letter from Remus’s hand, then marches into the kitchen tor read it. Remus follows. 

“Are you hungry? Would you like a cup of tea?” 

“No,” says Sirius shortly. He won’t look at Remus. He sits at the table and tears the letter open. Remus watches him read it. His eyebrows drive deeper and deeper down his face. 

“Is something wrong?” asks Remus, suddenly concerned. Harry had seemed fine yesterday, just shocked. 

Sirius clenches his jaw for a second, looking thoughtful, and then nods. 

“Harry thinks Narcissa’s brat is up to something,” he says reluctantly. “He thinks he’s working for Voldemort.” 

Remus considers that. Harry is remarkably level-headed for someone his age, but he has some of his father’s tendency to divide the world into the good and the bad, and, privately, Remus is skeptical that Narcissa Malfoy would allow her only son to work directly for Voldemort, not with Lucius currently sitting in Azkaban.

“Has he gone to Dumbledore with his suspicions?” he asks neutrally. 

Sirius taps the letter with a frown. “He says he has. He says Dumbledore dismissed it.” 

“Ah. Sirius – Harry always thinks Draco is up to something.” Remus pauses. “Much like you always thought Severus was up to something.” 

Sirius recoils slightly. 

“ _Severus?_ I’m sorry. You must have left out the part where you and Snivellus are on a first name basis.” 

Remus grimaces. He had started calling Severus by his first name in order to be professional – most of the Hogwarts professors called each other by their first names – but he had also done it because Severus so clearly seemed to dislike it. Unfortunately, the habit had stuck, and Sirius – the other Sirius – had never really appreciated its passive-aggressive benefits. 

“We worked together,” says Remus, trying to shut down an argument he knows is coming. “When I was at Hogwarts.” 

Sirius scowls. “I know. You mentioned that when you told me how he bloody ruined everything when I tried to kill Peter.” 

“It was my fault for not – ”

“I can’t believe Dumbledore lets him teach,” says Sirius, cutting him off. “What’s he teach the students? Those creepy spells he writes? You know, James still has that…” 

He trails off, suddenly pale. 

“Padfoot,” says Remus. One of Sirius’s hands lies flat on the table. Remus touches it gently. 

“I’m fine,” says Sirius, though his voice is thick. He jerks his hand away and scowls up at Remus. “What did Snivellus do during the first war? You never said.” 

“He was a Death Eater,” admits Remus. “But!” he adds, as Sirius’s eyes flash, triumphant. “He redeemed himself. I don’t know what he did. But Dumbledore trusts him.” 

“So I was right!” howls Sirius. He rises from the table, both fists clenched. “Snivellus _was_ usually up to something. And he _did_ become a Death Eater! Maybe he’s changed now, but how many people did he hurt before that?” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Padfoot,” says Remus calmly. “Dumbledore trusts Snape implicitly.” 

“Well, does he trust this Draco brat?” demands Sirius. 

“Does it matter? How is a sixteen-year-old a real threat to the Order? Or the Ministry? Or Hogwarts?” 

“How is a sixteen-year-old a real threat to Voldemort?” Sirius shoots back. 

Remus has no response to that. Sirius tosses his hair back, haughty. 

“See?” he says. “Besides, the way you tell it, we weren’t much older than them when we got involved in the war. _I’m_ not much older than them now.”

“And we were too young,” says Remus. “Just like Harry’s too young.” 

He raises his hand before Sirius can get a word in. “I know none of us had a choice. I just wish we hadn’t been so young.” He gazes at Sirius. “I wish we’d had more time.” 

Sirius gazes back at him. Some of the fury drains from his face. 

“We have time now, Moony,” he says quietly, almost shyly. 

Remus looks away. He is very grateful for the table between them. His cheeks feel flushed. He’s being idiotic, he chides himself. And he’s being cruel to Sirius. 

“Just be careful following Harry down rabbit holes.” 

“It’s not a rabbit hole!” cries Sirius, the fury returning. “I’m going to help Harry. I don’t care what you say.” 

“I’m not your jailer,” says Remus. He remembers the last, dark year in Grimmauld Place, and adds, “I never was.” 

Sirius scowls at him and reads right through his words. 

“You can’t blame me for something I never did. Or something the other me did.” 

Once again, Remus has no response. 

Maybe it would be easier to resist Sirius, he thinks, if he and Sirius hadn’t spent so many years apart. But he only has a few years’ worth of memories of the man Sirius became, and those years are outnumbered by the years of terrible ache and dull hate. 

It’s easy to push away those years. Here is the Sirius he remembers best. Here is the Sirius that spent thirteen years haunting his memories, not the broken man Remus had at the end. 

But he loved that broken man. Maybe he loved him more because he was broken. He doesn’t want to be disloyal to him. 

++

The next day is the first of December, and it’s covered in snow. It’s only a thin layer, and Remus expects it will melt off by the afternoon. But it’s pretty to look at, and he gazes at it from his kitchen window, cup of tea in hand. He’s acutely aware of Sirius prowling around the house, muttering Christmas carols under his breath, and no doubt plotting how to help Harry. 

He expects a letter from Dumbledore at some point. Something with instructions on what he and Sirius should be doing, or theories on how and why Sirius is here, or even just questions or further instructions about the Order work Remus had been doing prior to Sirius’s resurrection. But all that day there’s nothing. Remus wonders if he should send Dumbledore a letter instead, letting him know what Sirius and Harry are up to. But he knows Sirius would see that as a betrayal. He resolves to just keep an eye on it, let it play out. 

He’s starting to suspect, anyway, that all Dumbledore wants of him right now is to keep Sirius out of the way and safe. It’s too similar to what he spent most of the last year doing, and it leaves an ugly taste in his mouth. But, for now, he doesn’t mind having a quiet day, tucked away at the end of the year, to be with Sirius again, even if things are tense between them. 

Sirius finds him reading in the kitchen that evening. 

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, with no preamble and before Remus even has a chance to put his book down. “If I’m here because of the map, maybe there’s a way we can bring Prongs back because of the map, too.”

“Maybe,” says Remus, after a second. “But…” 

He stops. He doesn’t want to wipe the hopeful look from Sirius’s face. 

“But what?” says Sirius, glowering. 

“But you and James died very differently,” he says quietly. “Sirius, you fell straight through the Veil. There wasn’t – there wasn’t a body to bury. And you showed back up exactly where you fell, it sounds like. So… I expect the manner of death, and the manner of your return are related. Even if the map had something to do with it.” 

Sirius scowls more, but Remus can tell he’s thinking it over. 

“Do you think anyone who ever had a portrait of them done fell through the Veil?” 

“I have no idea,” says Remus. “I expect the Department of Mystery are the only ones who know that sort of thing.” 

Sirius slumps. He grabs a chair and sits down heavily in it. 

“I was just hoping…" he says, head hanging, hair hiding his face. 

“I know,” says Remus. He runs his thumb along his book’s cover. “We can look into it though. I’m not sure where we’d start. Maybe the library at Tara…”

Sirius raises his head and looks at him hopefully. Remus manages a wan smile. 

“And I’d like to know how exactly it is that you’re here, anyway,” he says. 

If only, he adds silently to himself, to make sure Sirius is able to stay. 

“Thanks,” says Sirius. He tilts back in his chair, head tilted back as well as he looks up at the ceiling. Remus lets himself have a second to enjoy the long, elegant lines of him, the sharp cut of his jaw. 

“How are you doing?” asks Remus, forcing himself to look away. “I know it’s been a lot of change for you.” 

Sirius laughs ruefully. “I don’t know,” he says. He runs his hand through his hair and brings the chair back down, four-footed, onto the floor. It strikes Remus how terribly young Sirius looks, how terribly young he is. “I still feel like I should be working on my transfiguration homework, or figuring out how to get back at Wormtail for his bit with the doxies or…” He laughs again, hand covering half his face. “Or I don’t know, a dozen different things.” 

“Is there anything I can do to help?” asks Remus. His chest squeezes painfully. “I know I’ve been….”

Confusing, he thinks. Unhelpful. 

Sirius rubs at his mouth, thoughtful.

“Do you have any pictures of me? Of when I was older?”

“Oh.” It’s not what Remus was expecting, and he has to think about it. 

“I destroyed most of them,” he admits. “And a lot of the ones with James or Lily in them, I gave to Hagrid to give to Harry. But… I might have a couple from Prongs’ stag party.” 

Sirius laughs, looking surprised.

“That would be perfect,” he says. 

Remus nods and goes to fetch them. It takes him a few minutes to remember where he’s stashed them; it’s been so many years since he looked at them. When he does find them, the pictures are mostly terrible. There’s only one where all four of them are looking at the camera, taken at the beginning of the night, and even in that one, James is wearing a pair of antlers and Sirius is without a shirt. The rest are goofier and drunker, taken at terrible angles, or at moments when someone is in the middle of eating or drinking or speaking. All the ones with just Sirius, or just Sirius and Remus, are gone. He should take out the ones with mainly Peter in them, too, now, he thinks. 

But he takes them out to Sirius anyway and lets Sirius sort through them. 

Sirius pauses at one, and his expression shutters as he looks at it. Remus touches the back of his chair and looks over his shoulder to see the photo, too. It was obviously taken at the end of the night; the angle is tilted wildly. Remus is in the middle of it, his head leaned back on the couch he’s on, obviously asleep, or about to be. Sirius is on one side of him, his head pillowed on Remus’s shoulder. His face is half-obscured by hair. Remus’s arm dangles over his shoulder. James is on the other side of Remus, and it’s James’s presence in the picture that saved it from being burned with all the others. James is passed out fully, his head in Remus’s lap, and his glasses dangling from one ear. His antlers have disappeared, but there is very obviously a dick drawn on his forehead. 

There’s not much movement in the photo. James twitches and squirms some, always a restless sleeper, but Remus and Sirius just breathe, and, with a start, Remus realizes they’re breathing in sync. He’s never noticed that before. 

“Can I keep this one in my room?” asks Sirius. 

“Yes,” says Remus immediately. 

“Thanks.” Sirius holds it delicately at the edges, his expression subdued. “Are there any from when I’m older? From after Azkaban?” 

“Yes,” says Remus slowly. “Not many… We never took many. It never felt like a good use of our time…” And Sirius, who had always been a little vain, had been too shy to have many taken of him after Azkaban. “But there’s one I like quite a lot.” 

The picture is framed. Remus keeps it in the bottom drawer of his dresser. This is the first time he’s been able to look at it since Sirius’s death. 

The light is warm, the golden unspooling light of a summer morning, and Sirius is at the kitchen table, his head propped up one hand, his quill in the other, and the Prophet spread out before him. He scratches an answer onto the crossword puzzle he’s doing, then realizes his picture’s being taken. He looks up, laughs, smiles brilliantly, and then goes back to the puzzle.

And then he looks up, laughs, smiles brilliantly, goes back to the puzzle, on a loop forever.

Sirius studies it quietly for a moment. He’s seated in the same chair as he was when the picture was taken. 

“I didn’t end up being much of a looker, did I?” 

“You were beautiful,” says Remus, almost defensively, before he realizes who he’s defending Sirius to. `He looks at the picture again. There’s a knot of pain in his stomach. “Azkaban took a lot from you. I think… If you’d had more time… you would’ve looked how you should have. But you were still beautiful, Sirius.” 

Sirius laughs roughly. He tightens his grip on the frame, knuckles going white. “You have to stop saying things like that, or you’re going to give me the wrong idea.”

“Sorry,” says Remus, blushing. He looks away, at the window, where the sky is so dark, he sees only his reflection, and, behind him, Sirius, gazing at him with a kind of sad, rapturous expression. He looks down instead. 

“There are some letters, too,” he says haltingly, unsure why he’s telling Sirius this, “from after you got out.” 

“Could I see them?” asks Sirius, after a pause. “I’d like to…. I want to know who I became.” 

Remus nods and goes back into his bedroom, where he keeps Sirius’s letters in the same drawer he keeps the photo. 

There aren’t many of them, a few from when Sirius was on the run, immediately after his narrow escape from Hogwarts, a few from the year before last, when he hid out by Hogsmeade to keep an eye on Harry. They’re mainly informative. Sirius hadn’t had the leisure of writing long letters. But there are glimpses, here and there, of the man Sirius was, of the relationship he and Remus had started to rebuild. 

A line from one catches his eye. 

_It’s terrible not being with you. I know we did it for twelve years, so another year should be easy, but somehow it’s worse because I know I could be with you, but I’m not. Can I come to dinner soon? Not just because I’m tired of eating rats. I miss you, too, Moony. Mostly I just miss you._

He sits down on the bed abruptly, struck by an overwhelming wave of sadness. He drops the box of letters. He’s never been able to look at his grief straight on. It’s too immense. Even a sidelong glance feels like it could be enough to kill him. He chokes back a sob, and the noise that comes out is even worse – a whimper.

“Moony?” says Sirius, appearing in the doorway. “Moony, are you all right?” 

Remus doesn’t say anything. He leans forward and covers his face with his hands. He shakes. 

“I’ve just missed you,” he finally manages to say.

“But I’m here,” says Sirius. He kneels down in front of Remus and take Remus’s hand. He presses his forehead against Remus’s knee. “When are you going to realize I’m here?” 

++

The next day is the full moon. 

“How are you feeling?” asks Sirius, when he comes into the kitchen. He stands near Remus, but not so near Remus can frown at him for it.

“Fine,” says Remus. “It’s never bad the day of.” 

“I know that. I just meant… emotionally. December’s always hard. And there’ll be another moon this month.” 

Sirius doesn’t say anything about Remus’s outburst from the night before. Remus is grateful. 

“The potion makes it better,” says Remus, though the wolfsbane potion doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, but Sirius doesn’t need to worry about that. 

“All right,” says Sirius. He passes by Remus, touching him lightly just above the elbow as he goes. “But I’ll be around to help, too.” 

++

Remus goes down to the cellar before it even makes it to evening. The moon will rise well before six. Sirius follows him down. 

“You don’t have to,” Remus says. He knows enough to know saying ‘you shouldn’t’ will be meant only with open rebellion. 

“I want to,” says Sirius. He tosses his hair and glances about the room. The walls are deeply gouged, though even the most recent gouges are a few years old at this point. Sirius touches one, running his hand down the deep groove. 

“How long did you have to do this alone?” he asks in a queer, high voice. “Before the potion?” 

Remus settles on the thick rug he’s placed down in the cellar. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, leaning against the cold wall. He should get some wall hangings, too, he thinks, for the winter months. He'll be fine as soon as he transforms, but he’s almost shivering now. 

“Ten years,” he says dully. 

Sirius inhales sharply. Remus doesn’t open his eyes. He can picture very easily what Sirius’s expression must look like. 

“How could I?” he says, voice thick with rage. “How could I – I chased down Peter? I should have cared about what would happen to you!” 

“If you could kill Peter now,” says Remus levelly, “if you could kill him right now, would you?”

“Yes,” says Sirius instantly. “I would – I’d – ”

“Why should it have been any different for you at twenty-one?” He struggles. He can feel the moon rising, his body starting to lose its shape, even as his mind remains. “But you told me, after you escaped, that you knew every month when the moon was.” 

“Of course I did,” says Sirius fiercely, and then Remus hears him shift to Padfoot. A wet nose is thrust under his palm, and he stroke along the top of Padfoot’s head. He half-laughs, even as the pain starts to stab through him. Of course Sirius would be harsh and unsympathetic even to his own self.

Then, he stops thinking at all, because the transformation is upon him. The pain is as excruciating as always, wracking his body into twisted shapes. His bones twist and lengthen and break and reform. Every hair bursting through his skin is like the prick of a needle, and, so multiplied, seems to burn. His organs writhe inside him. He howls once in pain, and then collapses forward, in the body of a wolf. 

After the pain subsides, his first coherent thought is: Padfoot smells the same. 

He didn’t think he’d been worried about it, but smelling Padfoot, smelling _his_ Padfoot, fills him with an incredible lightness. He can’t trust his fallible human eyes and heart, but the wolf knows: this is Padfoot. This is his.

The wolfsbane potion has been a blessing. Remus no longer lives in fear of passing his curse on. He no longer spends a night a month tearing his body apart because he can’t tear a human apart. So he would never say a word against the potion. But it is a kind of monthly prison, also, to be a man inside a wolf. He still has all his human thoughts and anxieties, his wants and fears, but no ability to act upon them, and the cold knowledge that excruciating pain waits him in the morning. 

It’s not like being an animagus either, at least, not as Remus understands it. Padfoot is still Sirius, but his mind has some of the qualities of the dog when he’s transformed, both mind and body exist in harmony. But Remus’s mind is all man, even if his senses are that of a wolf’s. He smells himself, sees his furry paws and long claws, feels the shape of his body, and is repulsed. The full moon is no longer a bloody thing he has to wrestle with, an affliction for his body, it’s an affliction of his mind now. There is so much to fear now, and so little he can do. 

Padfoot licks his ear, as if he can smell the agitation on him. Remus thinks he must. Sirius – after Azkaban, during one of the few moons they’d been together – had almost said as much once. He feels suddenly both naked and grateful. He lifts his snout and knocks it against Padfoot’s own. 

Padfoot gives a soft, comforting woof, and then settles against him, his head resting on Remus’s neck. 

They pass the night that way, curled against each other. Remus even manages to get a little sleep. 

++

Sirius helps him up the stairs the next morning, while Remus is still dizzy from the pain. 

“Do you normally just stay down there until you can stand?” asks Sirius, as he puts Remus into bed. 

Remus is too exhausted to dissemble. 

“Yes,” he says. 

He can feel Sirius’s anger radiate off him in jagged spikes. He closes his eyes against it. Sirius had been just as furious the first time he learned this, when he’d stayed with him after Azkaban. But who was there left that Remus could ask for help?

“I’m not angry at you,” says Sirius after a long pause. “I’m angry…” He breaks off with a laugh. “At everything. At the whole bloody world.” 

“You always were,” mutters Remus. That was always half their bloody problem.

“Shut up, Moony,” says Sirius sweetly. He tucks the blankets up around Remus’s shoulders. “And get some bloody sleep.” 

++

It sleets all that day. Remus watches it from his bed, in between fits of sleep, grateful to be inside. Sirius brings him tea and toast and sits beside him, reading a book from Remus’s shelf. 

“You don’t have a lot of food in the cupboard,” says Sirius around lunchtime, when he brings Remus more toast. 

Remus picks at it. “No,” he says. 

Sirius looks at him sidelong. 

“I didn’t look after you?” he says. 

“When would you have had the chance to.” 

“I mean after I…” Sirius makes a falling gesture with his hand. “In my will?” 

“No.” Remus’s body is one heavy ache, like that of a bad cold, but he’s also drowsy and warm. He finishes the toast and sinks back down beneath the covers. “You left everything to Harry. Like I asked you to.” 

“That doesn’t seem right,” says Sirius. 

“I’ve always managed on my own.” 

Lily and James had left him a small bequest – about 500 galleons. When he’d found out, a few days after their deaths, after Peter’s death, after Sirius’s betrayal, his head had filled with an awful, mechanical buzzing. He could picture them so clearly deciding to do it; they were both too generous and never understood his need to not be pitied. “Moony will kill us, if he finds out,” James would have said. “Good thing we’ll already be dead,” Lily would have said in response. 

He'd hated them for a moment then, as one of Gringotts’ goblins had counted out the coins, and then looked at Remus shrewdly. “Lucky to have friends like yours,” he’d said. 

Remus had said nothing. He would have been luckier to never have had friends all. He’d taken all the money with him when he’d left Gringotts, and thrown it all into the Thames.

“You’re too proud,” says Sirius sullenly, as if he can read Remus’s mind. But, thinks Remus, he doesn’t have to in order to know how Remus is. Sirius drums his fingers along his thigh, and then asks sharply, “The other day, at Diagon Alley, that was all your money?” 

Remus nods. The wand and robes took most of what was in his account. He’s not too worried, though. He always finds something to carry him through. 

Sirius blows out a huff of air, irritated. 

“I could get a job in town, so I can help out.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” says Remus. 

He feels Sirius stiffen slightly with surprise. Remus touches his hand gently. He’s still not Sirius’s jailer.

“Thank you for the toast,” he says. 

Sirius sighs and leans back against the headboard. He puts his hand in Remus’s hair, and Remus turns slightly and presses his nose into the outside of Sirius’s thigh. He knows better than this, and he knows he's just using the moon as an excuse. He feels Sirius trace the shell of his ear, then the line of his jaw to the point of his chin. Sirius presses his finger gently into the divot below Remus’s lower lip. Remus wants to kiss his hand, and the want settles in his chest and aches there. 

“Thanks for not giving me a hard time over looking out for you,” says Sirius. He tries to say it carelessly, but his voice catches. 

Remus closes his eyes. He breathes Sirius in and feels the solid, living warmth of him. He lets himself have it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “for being how I am.” 

He's not Sirius’s jailer, but he hasn’t been very good at being Sirius’s friend. He’s kept him at arm’s length. He recognizes that; he’s just not sure how else to be. 

Sirius starts to knead his scalp, and Remus shivers, pleasant pinpricks cascading down his neck.

“It’s all right. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not like you were ever any different.” 

Remus has nothing to say to that. None of them ever had the chance to grow old, to grow up. Not James, who was murdered, nor Peter, living as a rat and a coward, nor Sirius, imprisoned with his own worst memories. And what is Remus’s excuse? That pain has so locked himself inside himself that he's never been able to grow at all?

++

He’s still weak two days later, when the next Order meeting is scheduled to happen. But he goes anyway, and Sirius comes with him. 

Sirius spares a simmering glance for his mother’s portrait, thankfully hidden behind its curtain, but he doesn’t otherwise react much to Grimmauld Place. But Remus can tell he’s barely holding in his rage. Sirius’s whole body is tensed, and his hands are curled in tight fists. Remus watched Sirius stalk through Grimmauld Place too often last year in the exact same pose. He feels even more sure in his decision to have Sirius live with him, for all the difficulties that’s brought with it as well.

He’s momentarily worried they’ll encounter Kreacher, but then remembers with a gut punch of gratitude that Harry had sent Kreacher away to work at Hogwarts. Remus wonders if Kreacher knows Sirius is back anyway – house elf magic is strange. He’ll have to follow up with Dumbledore. He doesn’t trust Kreacher to keep that secret, should he know. 

Molly cries when she sees Sirius. She cries so hard she has to sit down. Arthur leans down and hugs her around her shoulders. Sirius stares at them both, mystified. 

“Is that Gid and Fab’s sister?” he says to Remus quietly. 

“Yes,” says Remus. “Molly Weasley now.” 

“And her brothers…” says Sirius. 

He scans the room, as if they might pop out from behind the curtains. Remus gives him a helpless look. Sirius’s eyes widen. 

“Oh. Them, too?” 

“Them, too,” says Remus softly. 

He wraps his hand around Sirius’s upper arm and squeezes gently. When he looks back at Molly, she seems to have gotten herself under control. 

“You’re so young,” she informs Sirius, standing shakily. Remus can see the desire to feed and comfort Sirius already winning out over her other emotions. 

“Yeah,” says Sirius uncomfortably. 

“Is he…?” says Molly. She purses her mouth and looks at Remus. “Joining us?”

“Yes. He’ll be in the meeting with us,” says Remus firmly. 

Molly bites her lip. “Are you sure, Remus. He’s so – ” 

“He’s Sirius,” says Remus. “Molly, that’s final.” 

“All right,” says Molly. She looks at Arthur, and he gives her a small nod. She sighs. “All right.” 

Remus almost has to laugh. He wonders what his Sirius would think to see Molly Weasley fretting over his well-being. Probably, “it’s about time.” The laugh dies in his mouth as he thinks that. Grimmauld Place has ghosts for him, too, and suddenly he misses Sirius, his Sirius, quite sharply – not the boy beside him, but the man he became.

Sirius looks at him oddly. Remus shakes his head. 

“Nothing,” he says softly, low so Molly and Arthur can’t hear. “Just, you and Molly butted heads quite a bit last year. It’s just funny to see her so motherly towards you.” 

Funny isn’t precisely the right word, but Remus doesn’t know what is. 

Sirius forces a smirk. It’s almost convincing. “Everyone falls for my charm eventually.” 

Remus feels himself blush at that, though he’s not sure why. 

“Yes,” he says. He wants to touch Sirius’s hair, he realizes, or his shoulder, or his back. He puts his hands in his pockets. “They always do.”

Other Order members start to straggle in shortly after. No one seems shocked to see Sirius – Dumbledore must have let them all know. But they’re all eager to shake his hand or hug him or, like Tonks, do both. 

“When are you going to see Mum?” she demands, tears streaming down her face once more.

Sirius laughs. “Soon,” he promises. “I’m just still trying to get my feet under me.” 

Mad Eye alone keeps his distance, which is to be expected. They all settle at the table, Dumbledore at the head, when Severus arrives. He sweeps in imperiously, and his black eyes glitter as they pass over Sirius. Sirius goes very stiff and then bares his teeth in a grin. 

“Disappointed to see me back?” he asks. 

“Sirius,” murmurs Remus 

Severus’s mouth curls in disdain. 

“Maybe you’ll actually be able to keep track of this one, Lupin,” he says coldly, and he takes his seat. 

Sirius launches himself across the table. 

Half the table shouts. Severus leaps to his feet, his hand on his wand. Remus just manages to grab Sirius by the back of his robes, and he yanks him back hard. Sirius tries to shake him off, but Remus keeps a firm grip. Severus smiles cruelly and slowly sits back down. 

“As excitable as ever,” he says. “That got you into trouble last time.” 

“Sirius has the excuse of being seventeen,” snaps Remus frostily. Sirius has gone rigid. Something hard and sharp is lodged in Remus’s chest, and he has half a mind to pull his wand on Severus. “What’s your excuse, Severus?” 

“That quite enough,” says Dumbledore, before Severus can respond.

There’s a long, tense moment, and then both Severus and Sirius nod. Sirius’s shoulders drop, and he slumps in the chair sullenly. Remus lets go of him, but then grabs Sirius’s hand beneath the table and squeezes it. Sirius glances at him from beneath his eyelashes, confused but grateful. 

The rest of the meeting is less eventful. Sirius’s attention is intense. He has the hard, pointed look of a hunting dog as various Order members give their reports, as Dumbledore assigns new roles. He gives nothing to Remus nor Sirius, and there’s a disappointed glimmer in Sirius’s eyes as the meeting draws to a close. Remus is surprised and disappointed too. But before he can say anything, Dumbledore turns and smiles kindly at Sirius. 

“Sirius,” he says. “My apologies for not mentioning it earlier, but there’s someone here who’d like to speak with you.”

Sirius raises his eyebrows and glances at Remus. Remus shrugs. And then Harry pokes his head into the meeting room, a faintly guilty look on his face. Remus assumes he’s been eavesdropping. He doesn’t blame him for it. Sirius’s whole face lights up, and he bounds from the table with a bellow. 

“Harry!” 

Harry’s face lights up, too, and the two disappear together, down the hallway. Remus watches them go with an odd mixture of trepidation, happiness, and jealousy. He shakes his head slightly.

“Albus,” he says, focusing himself on the task at hand. “If you have a moment…” 

Dumbledore looks at him patiently. 

“Can I ask why you’ve left Sirius and me with nothing to do?” he asks. 

“Ah. I thought you might ask something like that.” Dumbledore inclines his head gravely. “It has nothing to do with my respect for your abilities – either of you. I’d merely like to be completely assured Sirius is who we believe him to be before he gets too deeply involved.” 

“He is,” says Remus certainly. He doesn’t know if Sirius will or can stay, but he knows that this is Sirius, that he has come back. Everything he’s done and said has convinced Remus of that point. “It will kill him if you don’t give him something useful to do.”

Dumbledore is quiet for a moment. He seems to be mulling something over. Remus lets him think, though he feels an unfamiliar impatience rise within him. He half-considers, again, the wisdom of not telling Dumbledore about what Harry and Sirius are up to, just to prove that Sirius with nothing to do is dangerous. 

“I am… investigating Voldemort’s past,” says Dumbledore, “and why it is that he has been able to survive death so often.” He looks at Remus sharply through his half-moon glasses. “Sirius may hold some clues.” 

“You won’t turn him into an experiment,” says Remus immediately. 

“I have no plans on doing so,” says Dumbledore. “But allow me another couple weeks to gather my thoughts together. Just be patient until then.” His eyes soften, and he touches Remus’s shoulder gently. “This time is a gift, Remus.” 

Remus gives him a long, careful look. He trusts Dumbledore more than he trusts anyone, and Dumbledore is the only person who has ever fully trusted him. Sirius didn’t. James didn’t. Not at the end. So he is willing to give the man some leeway. 

He nods. “I understand,” he says, and then he leaves to find Sirius. 

He finds him with Harry. The two of them are in Buckbeak’s room, heads close together and talking in low, excited voices. Buckbeak seems ecstatic. He keeps butting his head against Sirius’s arm, in the least hippogriff-like behavior Remus has ever seen, and Sirius keeps laughing and patting Buckbeak on the neck.

Remus stands in the doorway, watching them. With Harry’s back to the door, it’s achingly familiar. They could be Sirius and James. This could be twenty years ago. Then Sirius lifts his head and sees Remus, and he smiles. It strikes Remus like a lance to the chest. He has to look away. 

“Good chat?” he asks, after they finish, when he has found his voice, and Harry has returned to Hogwarts. They're lingering in the kitchen. Remus isn't sure why. Habit, maybe.

“Yes,” says Sirius. “It was all right.” 

Remus gently puts his arm around Sirius’s shoulders.

“You were right,” says Sirius, and his voice has an odd, thick quality to it. “He’s really not like James. I mean – he is. James would think he’s brilliant. But he’s not James. He’s…” 

“He’s sadder,” finishes Remus quietly. “He’s had to deal with a lot more than our Prongs did.” 

“Yes,” agrees Sirius. He looks at Remus, his eyes burning with a familiar madness. “And I died for him? For Harry?” 

Remus nods his head. He finds, suddenly, that he can’t speak. 

“Good,” says Sirius fiercely. He inhales, deep and shaky, and wipes at his eyes. “Good. I’d do it again.” 

“Don’t.” 

Remus laughs, an awful, rough laugh, and Sirius stares at him, baffled. Remus shakes his head. 

“Don’t,” he says again. “Don’t say that. I know it’s true. But don’t say it. Do you think I can lose you again? Let someone else make that sacrifice next time, Padfoot.” 

Sirius frowns slightly. He cups his hand around Remus’s upper arm and squeezes gently, and that sends a shudder through Remus. 

“It’s strange being back here,” says Sirius, referring to Grimmauld Place, refusing to respond to Remus. “I don’t like it.” 

Remus touches the back of his neck gently. "Then let's go home," he says and is amazed he's allowed to say it

++

“How are you feeling?” asks Sirius the next morning, over breakfast, a look in his eyes like he’s plotting something. “Well enough to make it to Tara today? Or we could go to Diagon Alley.” 

“What do you need at Diagon Alley?” asks Remus mildly. “Has Harry asked you to go?” 

Sirius narrows his eyes at him. 

“If I tell you, will you come with me, or will you tell Dumbledore?” 

Remus is spared from answering by a knock at the door. To his surprise, it’s Arthur Weasley. They go, rather briskly, through the motions of making sure the other isn’t a Death Eater in disguise, and then Arthur steps through the door with a bright smile. 

“I have a bit of a surprise for you,” he informs Sirius. “Molly reminded me of it last night. If you both don’t mind stepping out?” 

Sirius and Remus glance at each other and then both nod. Arthur leads them out. 

Sirius’s motorbike is on Remus’s lawn, as gleaming and black and lethal-looking as ever. Sirius gasps. 

“I suppose I was holding onto it for Harry…” says Arthur. 

“I finished it?” says Sirius. He dazzles Remus with a smile. “You never told me I finished it!”

“Sorry,” says Remus, with a laugh. “I forgot you’d already started working on it in seventh year.” 

Sirius shakes his head. 

“Even if I hadn’t, this is still the kind of thing you tell a man. Future you bought a motorbike and made it fly!” He grins at Arthur. “Thank you,” he says. 

“Well, it is yours,” says Arthur sheepishly. “And Molly isn’t too fond of me keeping flying vehicles around anyway.” 

But Sirius isn’t listening. He’s run to the motorbike. He circles it, touching it admiringly, a fierce smile on his lips. 

“Now you’ve done it,” says Remus to Arthur, but he’s smiling, too, hard enough it’s already starting to make his face hurt. 

Arthur laughs. “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.” 

“It’s all right,” says Remus, still smiling as he watches Sirius. “It’s a good trouble.” 

“Good,” says Arthur, and then, lightly, “How are you doing? You know, you and Sirius are welcome to the Burrow any time.” 

“I know,” says Remus, “and thank you, Arthur. But you and Molly have taken in enough strays as it is.”

“Oh, we never mind taking in more,” says Arthur. “But in your own time.” 

Remus nods, appreciative of the Weasleys’ steadfast friendship, overbearing though it can sometimes be. Arthur checks his watch. 

“I should get going. Before I’m late for work.”

“You don’t want a cup of tea or anything?” asks Remus, suddenly recalling his duties as a host. 

“No, no.” Arthur clasps him on the shoulder. “Do come by for Christmas dinner, at least.” 

“Of course. Give my best to Molly and the kids,” says Remus automatically in response. He’s still watching Sirius, enjoying the perfect joy on his face. 

Arthur nods and disapparates. At the sharp crack of his leaving, Sirius looks up. He pins Remus with another dazzling smile. 

“Should we try her out?” he asks. 

“Try her out?” says Remus teasingly, trying to smile in a way that looks less deranged. 

“For old times’ sake?” says Sirius, grinning just as madly. “At least, I assume we used to do this together.” 

Remus laughs in spite of himself. “Yes, we did.” 

Sirius pats the seat behind him and raises his eyebrows. With a shake of his head, Remus walks over and gets on behind him. 

“Helmet,” says Sirius, passing the passenger helmet back. He puts on his own. Remus is impressed. 

“I’ve just remembered you’ve never actually driven this thing,” says Remus. He puts the helmet on. 

“Have you? Well, it can’t be too hard. I know I’ve done it after all.” 

And before Remus has a chance to respond, Sirius revs the engine, and they’re off. Remus throws his arms around Sirius and yells. They’re pressed together, chest to back, and Remus is sharply aware of Sirius’s body.

They soar then, up and up and up, above the smell and drift of woodsmoke, over the winter barren hills and silver-gleaming lakes and rivers. Sirius laughs gorgeously, uproariously, a deep, long, joyful laugh that Remus hasn’t heard in years, hasn’t heard since before Sirius went to Azkaban. He keeps his arms around Sirius’s waist and laughs with him. 

++

When they land, they’re both freezing despite Remus’s best attempts at a warming charm. But they’re both still giddy and light with laughter. Remus feels half-floating with it. Sirius’s smile is brilliant. His eyes sparkle. His cheeks are red. His hair is matted slightly from the helmet, and, without thinking about it, Remus reaches over and runs his hand through it, straightening it out. The side of his hand brushes Sirius’s cheekbone, and Remus feels a small, static shock leap between them. 

At that, Sirius’s eyes widen. He grabs Remus by the front of the robe and pulls him half over the motorbike. Then, he kisses him. Sirius’s mouth is shockingly cold. Remus grabs at the motorbike to steady himself, and the metal is cold, too, cold enough to burn. He jerks away. Sirius stares at him, his eyes two dark and shadowed places. 

Remus touches his mouth and stares back. He has to make a decision, he knows, and soon. In the end, it’s easier to fall into his old habits of shame and fear. 

“You know I can’t,” he says.

“Why not?” asks Sirius angrily. He brings his fists down onto the motorbike. “I know you want to. We both do.” 

Remus laughs hollowly. 

“You have a second chance, Padfoot,” he says. “You should use it. Don’t waste your life on me.” 

"Moony," says Sirius, exasperated. "I don't know how you can be so old and still so stupid. You're allowed to have nice things. You're allowed to want things! I've been in love with you since I was twelve bloody years old, and it doesn't sound like I ever stopped. I've no intention of stopping now!"

Remus laughs, low and hysterical. “Don’t you get it? It never works. We keep trying, and it doesn’t work. I know better than to think it’ll work this time.”

“I’m in love with you!” shouts Sirius. “Don’t _you_ get it? You’re still Moony. I can see still see that you’re you. That’s a law of conservation, Moony. The soul doesn’t change its shape. Just the body.” 

“That’s for transfiguration,” says Remus, with a helpless, falling feeling. “Not for time.”

Sirius’s eyes seem to tremble, a film of furious tears over them, but not yet dropping. He’s gone pale in his rage and his hands are clenched tightly. Remus is familiar with this phosphorescent anger. Sirius never lost it, but Sirius never had much chance to grow. 

“I’m always going to be in love with you. In every life. At every opportunity.” 

Remus closes his eyes against the declaration. It’s such a seventeen-year-old thing to say. It’s such a _Sirius_ thing to say. Remus accepted so many terrible things in his life without blinking. That had been part of what had undone them, long ago, that Remus had never been willing to fight for their relationship.

“You’re seventeen,” he says. “You don’t know anything.” 

“Fuck you,” snarls Sirius. “I know more than you.” 

Remus says nothing. He just opens his eyes and looks at Sirius sadly. With a blazing look, Sirius steps backwards from the motorbike. 

“Figure it out,” he snaps, and then he disapparates. 

Remus jerks forward, too late, and touches nothing but air. He knocks the motorbike over in his movement, and it falls with a clatter. He stumbles over it, into the space where Sirius had just been. 

He panics. Sirius could be taken by the Department of Mystery. He could be killed by Death Eaters. He could simply disappear, gone mysteriously the way he came. 

It occurs to him then that if Sirius had come back to him missing an arm or a leg, or even if Sirius had come back as a ghost entirely, Remus still would have loved him. And here is Sirius whole, just missing some years, and many of those years brutal, dark, unnecessary years. Except now Sirius isn’t here at all. 

He goes to Hogwarts, to Hogsmeade, to Andromeda’s, who is shocked and suspicious to see him. Sirius is nowhere. 

Finally, he goes to Grimmauld Place. He doesn’t know where else Sirius could be. 

The house is strangely empty. Even after all their efforts to reclaim it, it still has a mean, muttering feeling to it, like it took on the personality of Walburga as she grew old here and died alone. It had been oppressive last year, driven Remus to strange nightmares, and he had only spent half of his time inside. For Sirius, locked in it all the time, it had been worse. Remus had always wondered and never dared to ask, which was worse: Azkaban and the dementors, or Grimmauld Place with all its ghosts? 

He walks through every room, calling Sirius’s name. 

He finds Sirius in his childhood bedroom, blasting spells at the Muggle bikini posters permanently stuck to the wall. Remus stands in the doorway and just looks at him. Relief makes him shaky. He holds onto the doorframe. 

“We got back together after Azkaban,” says Sirius, without looking at Remus. He continues scowling at the ceiling.

“Yes,” says Remus, though it hadn’t sounded like Sirius was asking a question. 

Sirius drops his scowl just long enough to look at Remus curiously, before he looks away again, back to the ceiling. 

“If you could go back in time to then, knowing what was going to happen, would you still do it? Would you still get back together with h – with me?”

“Yes,” says Remus, closing his eyes.

“If you could go back to when I kissed you, for the first time, the very first time, would you kiss me back?” 

“Yes,” says Remus, and his voice is barely above a whisper. There is a familiar awful, hollow feeling in his chest. But he doesn’t need to think twice about his answer. “You’ve been the best and worst parts of my life, Sirius.” 

“The worst?” says Sirius, in a small voice. “You’ve had some pretty awful things happen to you, Moony.”

“The worst,” says Remus. “The way we fell apart… What I thought you’d done. I’ve lost you twice.” 

“So why not try again?” asks Sirius, so plaintive Remus has to open his eyes and look at him. Sirius is pale. His hands are twisted in the bedding. His eyes are large and pleading, and his look catches in Remus’s chest and hooks him there. “What are you afraid of that hasn’t already happened?”

Remus walks to him like a zombie and sinks onto a corner of the bed. 

“I’m afraid of it happening again,” he says. 

“But it’ll be worth it again,” says Sirius. He sits up and crawls forward, across the bed. He touches the back of Remus’s palm very lightly with his fingertips. The sensation so faint it makes Remus shiver slightly, like passing through a ghost. 

Loving Sirius and losing him, Remus knows, were never causal events. His love for Sirius exists outside the bloody demands of history. Each time Sirius has come into his life, it has been painful, the way a hand burns when feeling returns after a numbing cold, and each time Sirius has left has been worse. But Sirius is here, and Remus knows he’ll burn now regardless of what he does. It's not a matter of loving him. It's a matter of what he'll do about it.

“It’s not about it being worth it,” says Remus, and there are tears in his throat and his eyes. “What choice do I have? I love you. But it’s not about me.” 

“It’s only about you,” says Sirius, ragged and exasperated. He brings his hand up and palms Remus’s face. “How have you still not learned to be kind to yourself?” 

“You should be with…” says Remus, but he can already feel his defenses crumpling in the heat of Sirius’s steady gaze, in the obliterating force of his own love, like an avalanche that rips up everything and leaves the landscape behind it bare. Sirius has always managed to strip him just so. 

“I should be with you,” says Sirius firmly. His jaw is tight, his chin jutted out slightly. “So let me.” 

Remus laughs roughly. He presses his face into Sirius’s hand. 

“God,” he says. “God. I’ve missed you. You have no idea.” 

Sirius brings his other hand up and cups Remus’s face. He kisses Remus’s forehead, the kind of odd, tender gesture that never seemed to come naturally to Sirius, that was all the more sweeter for the fact he was clumsy at them. 

“Come on, Moony,” he whispers. “Look at me. I’m here. I’m here now.” 

Remus looks up at him. Sirius’s face is very close to his. His eyes are wide, hopeful and helpless. Remus takes a deep shuddering breath and presses his forehead against Sirius’s. He brings his hands up and wraps them around Sirius’s wrists, feels the steady, living beat of Sirius’s pulse. They hold onto each other, once again the only two survivors of a shipwreck. 

He kisses Sirius. It’s an unsteady, desperate thing, and his mouth lands on the corner of Sirius’s. Sirius laughs shakily and turns Remus’s face slightly, and they kiss properly. It’s like the sun rises in Remus’s chest. He presses forward eagerly, as if he were seventeen again, too, and Sirius laughs again, high and breathless, and Remus slides his tongue into Sirius’s mouth. He feels Sirius jerk slightly, catches his moan in his mouth. All of Remus’s resolve goes freewheeling into oblivion. He gives himself over to the feel of Sirius’s mouth, Sirius’s hands on his face, in his hair. He runs his hands down Sirius’s arms, touches his shoulders and his back, feels the shift of his muscles beneath his robes. He desperately needs to touch him. 

They pull away after several minutes of that, both breathless. Sirius pushes his hair back. The pale skin of his throat is flushed, and Remus wants to put his mouth there and bite, in the way he knows will make Sirius yell. 

“Merlin,” says Sirius with a ragged laugh. 

He touches Remus’s face lightly and runs his thumb over Remus’s cheekbone. The look he gives Remus is absolutely devoted, his smile slight and stunned. It’s almost too much, but Remus doesn’t let himself look away. He holds Sirius’s hand flat against his face. He wants to kiss Sirius again. He wants to never stop kissing him. But he also wants to just stay like this, forever on the precipice, in the space between wanting and resolution, before all he knows that will follow, love and ruin both.

“Harry said you were his favorite Defense professor,” says Sirius suddenly, breaking the spell. He sounds dazed, like he’s speaking just to speak, to say something and hear Remus answer. 

“Did he?” says Remus, and he knows he sounds equally dazed. 

“Yes.” Sirius grins, impish, and then, in a flash, he straddles Remus’s lap. His hands are free and he touches Remus’s collar. 

“Ooh, Professor Moony,” he coos. “I wouldn't mind having detention with you.”

“Shut up, Padfoot,” says Remus with a laugh, and he feels the precipice rush to meet him. He hurtles over it. He pulls Sirius flush against him and kisses him again, once, softly. Sirius lets out a small, disappointed groan as Remus pulls away slightly. 

Remus grins at him and brings his hand up to cup Sirius’s chin. He presses his thumb gently against Sirius’s lower lip and watches as Sirius’s mouth parts, just slightly, watches as his light eyes darken more than they already have. Remus feels a tightness in his chest, a warmth in his stomach, the heady rush of desire. He runs his thumb along Sirius’s bottom lip very lightly, then along the top, tracing the shape of his mouth. 

“Oh,” says Sirius softly. The word ghosts over Remus’s hand. “ _Oh._ ”

Sirius’s tongue flicks out and touches the tip of Remus’s thumb. Remus grins and pushes his thumb into Sirius’s mouth, the rest of his hand still curled under Sirius’s chin. Sirius’s teeth scrape against his thumb, and Sirius moans. He closes his mouth, sucks gently. 

Remus watches him for a moment. He can feel how hard Sirius is against him, how hard he is in return. 

He shifts Sirius down, back onto the bed, and leans over him. He palms the side of Sirius’ face, and he kisses Sirius deeply. Sirius’s whole body arches up, and his hands grab at Remus and try to drag him down. Remus lets him. He buries his hands in Sirius’s soft hair and bites his lower lip, presses his leg between Sirius’s. Sirius gasps and jerks up, rocking against Remus’s thigh. Remus laughs, and then he bites down on Sirius’s throat, at exactly the point and exactly the pressure he knows Sirius likes most. Sirius lets out a sound like he’s been kicked in the stomach, and his whole body goes limp. But he hasn’t come. Remus can still feel his dick hard against his leg. He kisses the spot where he bit down on Sirius's throat, and then shifts downward along Sirius’s body. 

Sirius half sits up. 

“What are you doing?” he asks. 

Remus hums in response. He holds Sirius’s hips down and feels how Sirius’s body trembles beneath his hands. Then he smiles up at Sirius. He feels dazed, struck dumb. Sirius stares back at him, mouth half open in wonder. Remus ducks his head against that awed gaze and presses his mouth against Sirius’s erection, through his robe. Sirius jerks, and his hand grabs Remus’s hair. 

“Easy,” laughs Remus, pulling up slightly. 

“Can you – ” Sirius swallows hard. He’s gazing at Remus like he’s never seen anything like him, and Remus has to look away once more. He presses his cheek against Sirius’s thigh. “Again?”

Remus nods. He pushes Sirius’s robes up and runs his hands up his thighs. Sirius shivers.

“Please,” says Sirius, raw. 

Remus doesn’t tease. He pulls down Sirius’s pants, and then slides his mouth down over Sirius’s cock, taking him as deep as he can. 

“Holy – ” Sirius yelps, and his hips try to jackhammer up. Remus keeps him pinned down, and Sirius squirms helplessly instead. He swirls his tongue over the head of Sirius’s cock, and Sirius actually whimpers. He grabs Remus’s hair and pulls hard enough to bring tears to Remus’s eyes. 

He pulls off. 

“Easy,” he says again, but he’s smiling as he says it. “I don’t usually like my hair pulled when I’m giving head.” 

“Do you like it other times?” asks Sirius, wild-eyed, chest-heaving. Remus is certain he could get Sirius to say or do whatever he wanted at this moment. But all he wants is for Sirius to enjoy this. 

“Maybe,” he says, and he runs his hand up along the sensitive skin of Sirius’s inner thigh. “You’ll have to find out.” 

“Fuck,” breathes out Sirius, but he puts his hands above his head and grips the bedsheet tightly. 

Remus drops a quick kiss to Sirius’s thigh and takes him in his mouth again. 

He remembers this. He remembers how Sirius feels beneath him, how Sirius’s body reacts, the helpless flutter of his dark lashes, the wordless shapes his mouth makes, the smooth warmth of the skin on his lower stomach, on the inside of his thigh. He remembers the taste of him and the smell of him. 

He remembers exactly what Sirius likes, too. He adds his hands, toying with Sirius and pulling up at the base. 

Sirius comes with a cry. It doesn’t take him long. Remus swallows him, and that bitter taste is sweet and familiar, too. 

Sirius sprawls out limply, eyes glazed. 

“You’re really bloody good at that,” he says hoarsely. 

Remus smiles tenderly at him and settles down beside him. He touches Sirius’s hair, pushing it off his face, and then kisses the bridge of his nose, kisses his eyebrows, kisses the swell of his lower lip and then all along his jaw. 

“I want you to feel good, too,” says Sirius, almost petulantly, once he’s started to recover.

“You will,” says Remus. He noses at Sirius and kisses him softly. He tugs gently at Sirius’s robes. 

Sirius catches on quickly, and he squirms up into a sitting position and gets undressed. Remus is a little slower about it. Even half-out of his mind with desire, he’s shy about his body. But Sirius watches him greedily, eyes dark and sharp. As soon as Remus’s robes are off, he darts forward and kisses his shoulder. 

“You’re beautiful,” he says, awed. His fingers trace along the scars of Remus’s chest, down his stomach and chest. “You’ve no idea how long I’ve…” He trails off, laughs self-consciously, and presses a kiss to Remus’s heart. “I guess you probably do actually.” 

Remus runs his hands through Sirius’s hair and gazes down at him. 

“I have some idea,” he admits.

“So what do you want?” Sirius kisses his collarbone. “I can…” He puts his hand awkwardly between them. “It’s just a different angle, right?” 

Remus shakes his head and kisses him. He pushes Sirius back onto the bed, and he pulls his hips up slightly. Sirius watches him closely. Remus kisses the corner of his mouth. 

“Whatever you want, Moony, you can have,” whispers Sirius. 

Remus groans at that and settles between Sirius's legs. He fucks between Sirius’s thigh, along the curve of his arse. Sirius moans and lifts his hips up, working with Remus in a rhythm. Remus presses his face into Sirius’s neck. He can feel Sirius everywhere, his hair against Remus’s face, his chest pressed to Remus’s, his forearms and hands locked tight around Remus’s back, and the hot, smooth skin between his legs. Sirius clenches around him. 

Remus doesn’t last long either. 

He comes with a shudder and bites down hard on Sirius’s shoulder. Sirius yelps and laugh, and holds Remus through it, kissing his forehead and his ear and the top of his head. 

“Moony,” he murmurs. “Moony, my Moony.” 

Remus turns his face and kisses him. He feels staggered, winded, but whole. Oddly whole. 

They lie together for several long moments, just looking at each other. Remus runs his hand lightly up Sirius’s arm and rubs his shoulder. Sirius takes his hand and kisses it, looks at Remus through smutty lashes, and smiles like an angel. 

“What was it like the first time we did it?” he asks, voice hushed. 

Remus smiles at the memory. He runs his thumb along Sirius’s eyebrow. 

“We were terrible. I think that was probably the worst handjob I ever had.” 

“Hey!” says Sirius, cross. He sits up and scowls down at Remus. “It’s not like I’d had a lot of experience.” 

Remus tugs him down and kisses him again, laughing. 

“I was so in love with you it didn’t matter,” he says softly against Sirius’s mouth. He feels Sirius’s answering smile.

They lie like that for another long moment, mouths pressed together, both smiling, until Sirius shifts away slightly. 

“Is it odd that I’m jealous?” he says, with a guilty, half-lidded look. “Of myself?”

“I don’t know,” says Remus. He pulls away slightly and cups Sirius’s face in his hands. He studies him closely. He thinks Sirius from last year would be jealous of this Sirius, too, who has time and youth and hope. But they’re the same Sirius, he knows now. And Sirius, in whatever form, would want to come back to him, would want Remus to take this chance to be happy. He presses his forehead against Sirius’s cheek. Sirius who he has lost and found and lost and found again. His impossible, miraculous Sirius. 

He turns Sirius’s face and kisses him.

“I’m just glad that you’re here,” he says honestly. “However it is that you are.”

He pulls away just enough to see Sirius’s eyes crinkle in a smile. He touches Remus’s mouth. Remus shivers at his touch.

“You’re not going to panic on me this time, are you?” asks Sirius. He yawns. 

Remus shakes his head. He pulls Sirius’s hand a little closer and kisses each knuckle there. Sirius yawns again, and Remus places his hand back down.

With a start, he realizes it’s gone dark and that snow is falling. The light from the streetlamps outside turns the falling snow to drifting shadows that float across Sirius’s chest and face. Remus watches the shadows, watches the slow conquest of sleep as Sirius yawns and blinks, shifts so he’s lying with his arm beneath his head, smiles again. Remus waves his wand to clean them both up, and then he settles down beside him. 

++

He wakes up, sometime later, to the total and unknowable darkness of a fall evening. It could be midnight, or it could be seven pm. The snow has stopped falling. Remus stirs slightly, not sure what woke him. Sirius is still fast asleep, his breathing deep and even. Remus sits up and looks down at him, at the pale curve of his shoulder and his half-open mouth. He feels fear and hope inside him in equal measure. Sirius is still so unfairly fragile, still too reckless. But he’s here, thinks Remus with wonder. Sirius has come back to him, come back from the mouth of death itself, and Remus is not alone in the dark. 

He's not alone at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear everyone, but especially Molly, I hope you enjoyed these 20,000 words of two people being very sad at each other and then having sex. Merry Christmas, Molly! And to everyone else: happy holidays if you celebrate; have a great day if you don't or if you're reading this and it's no longer a holiday for you. 
> 
> Title was originally going to be taken from the Atheist Christmas Carol by Vienna Teng, because that is my quintessential sad Remus Lupin at Christmas song, but I couldn't quite finagle a title out of it I liked, so I just stole from the song for the last line instead. Give it a [listen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E20PpEsU3oE)! (Link is to youtube.)


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